Virtue

Virtue

Don’t shine me out with your admiration
For you may not bear the glare
Light hurts when you need your sleep
And I've had a long day
Trying to be unseen.

Don’t carve me out for your emotions noble
For I may be a poison dressed in petals
Venom is true when it works
And I've a lurking fear
That I've grown weaker.

And least of all tell me of your plans
For I may put you off with my indifference
Plans are an assault on time
And I've always lived with the illusion
That time heeds to no one.

Speak to me of your silences
Murmur to me the music of your nightmares
Why put on a façade of sweetness
When sourness is all we ultimately expect?
Let us all stand tall
Crouching to the bidding of our vanities
For beneath the sublime cloaks of our vanities
Are we so vulnerably us.

Reserve for me your confusions
For they are more engaging than your convictions
Definition claws at the wings of freedom
And I always wish to be in the knowing
For when I know I need not be.

Pray! Don't come calling me "My friend!"
For foes I have not.
I want you to want yourself
At the best and worst of your times
Eating up the void between your rhymes.