Heart and mind racing,
still pacing my cage.
Blindly retracing
each step just to gauge
the odds that I might
get through this in one piece.
Too tired to fight,
yet unable to cease.

You may not believe it now,
but in time you'll feel the sting
of all of the contempt
that familiarity can bring.
Once civility erodes,
predictability gives way
to recycled, stifled conflicts
left with little more to say.

Old habits die slowly,
never resting in peace,
Clinging to the familiar,
but all things must cease.
Wraiths of the past
come to take what was theirs.
Time claims to heal all,
yet too slowly repairs
all the wounds that say more
than we could ever tell,
but the scars that still plague us
define us as well.
All the fragments of flashbacks
and steps to retrace
are just pieces of puzzles
to fit into place.