You know what troubles me?

They say that nobody ever changes

Despite their impressions otherwise

And despite my efforts, I'm daunted by the same faults as always.

While I'm tired of their jabs, they seem ever renewed by some hidden source of sustenance.

They say that living 25 years is just the amount of time it takes

To harden in your mold, in flexible

But I'm past that line already

I shuffle down the downhill side past broken trees and decomposition

The bittersweet medley that blends death with hope of the ultimate oblivion

Thirsty for a time when I would sit down, my work complete

Surrounded by a field of fallen enemies in defeat

Orbited by planetary jewels of my own design

Made happy forever by their luminance

But to break out of the present was impossible.

The future doesn't exist yet; the past doesn't exist anymore.

They've never existed: only this,

the perpetual present where we're all stuck.

But it felt like the coming day would just be a replica of one before

With pain and boredom, and just brief bursts of pleasure

And so miserable and feeling the futility of my existence,

I lifted up my voice, and to my future being I sang this lament:

Swear that I will crawl out the crater

To smell the land that's left when the smoke clears

Swear that when I slide down the side

My troubles won't be close at my heels

I can't promise you will be free from the ghosts

Of fear, of pain, of doubting, but

You will know the faces they show you

And recognize they're only a vapor

You may regret the route, but here you are anyway

You may regret the route, but here you are anyway

You may regret the route, but here you are anyway

You may regret the route, but here you are anyway

Burned up, beaten down, bleak and weary

Weakness is a wall that you have got around

You may regret the route, but here you are anyway

You may regret the route, but here you are anyway

My future self cheered me with these words

And it was as if, though nothing had changed in my external world,

I saw my future existence and my present unified in a strange eternal present

As I continued to slide down the slope of the crater's outer wall,

I thought, with great clarity, about the misery that had marked my life

while I was struggling, inch by inch, to the crest of that vast volcanic mouth

And I saw the singed bark of the stately trees,

and I looked down and saw the darkened flesh of my own singed arms

It was then that I realized that I had demonstrated,

in my own fragile way,

the strength of the tree