Every motherfucking day is job. Every day a fight. Nothing ever came without one. Fight is what I must always do. I’m good in a crisis, yet long to be free of the shackles that chain me to my nemesis: Me.

Every day with the aging face that greets me in the mirror. Cares and woes etching longitude and latitude in weathered skin. Others professed youthful looks gradually buckling under the weight of the cares I expend daily.

I live with the consequences of my actions, my loves, my mistakes. Live with the fallout of stupidity, shortsights and oversights from friends and lovers I have fought – tooth and nail, bile and blood, for – and still lost. Always the one to pursue.  Always the one to reach out, to mediate, to forgive. Am I not permitted the occasional retreat into anger, a lack of ‘understanding’ when I remain misunderstood…