My Back is Not Big Enough

My back is not big enough.

It is not big enough for everything I hold,

Not big enough for everyone else,

So I strap the burdens of those who I love to my legs, my arms,

I let my muscles burn with their weight.

One day, someone will place the last straw, and my back will break.

And as I lay in agony in the sand,

A scaly desert snake will come along,

And put me out of my misery.

Sometimes I feel as though I am the only game in the arcade,

Validation!

Must be an emotional vampire to play,

Insert 1: secret pain

And play the validation game.

Jam the tokens in no matter if they don’t fit, scratch up the coin slot.

And when you get tired, walk away, accidentally pull out the power cord with your foot,

Walk across the neon floor under the blacklights, and trade all your tickets for ring pops and honey sticks,

Cover your sugary blue tongue with the sweet syrup

As I am carted away, and locked up in the dark.

I am skating on thin ice,

Blades digging into a paper thin layer,

You come along, to pull me off the pond and wrap me in a blanket by the fire,

To thaw my hands around a mug of tea, to thaw the numbness that has been living there for years,

But as you reach for me, you get greedy,

You push and pull too much,

Creeeeeeaaaaak,

Hairline fractures in the ice,

It snaps and I fall,

And you shrug and move on to the next skater,

Complaining about how rude it is I left you,

When you offered to take me in.

As I run out of gas,

Mechanically working every gear and bolt,

Creaking and groaning as I make my way to you,

I get in the car, and before I can unseal my metal jaw,

And tell you how hard it was today,

You tell me, flesh and blood, with an angry glare,

“I’m in a bad mood, so stay away.”

I crank the handle to lock my jaw,

And press the button for the machine that will tell you everything you need to hear.

10 minutes later you won’t be in a bad mood,

I will have tapped all the sap that was clogging your veins,

And allowed it to seal up every joint,

So that when I get home, I have to take a bath in oil,

Before I can even move enough to perform my basic robotic duties.

And every day I will hope,

Until I learn to stop wearing out my hands,

And leave my jaw locked, the handle cranked.

Until someday you leave me behind,

When I gain the courage to jump off your runaway train,

And I’m left paralyzed on the rocks, spine severed,

And you don’t notice,

Until you’ve circled back and you see me dying,

And you think “god I can’t believe she would jump off my train.”

And as I lay there in agony, blood staining the rocks, tears in my eyes,

I’ll think “I should have known”

I should have known that if every one of your past passengers was a toxic evil snake,

Then maybe it wasn’t the passengers but the train,

Maybe they were just trying to hold up the weight of your sky,

Bearing it on their backs like Atlas,

But I am not a titan,

My back is not big enough.