Crying Beside The Burning Bridge Poem by Jodie Hardy

There is a place I like to go,
In the times when my heart tells me so.
I tread the very common track.
Its long, but it takes longer to come back!

Day upon day, hour after hour I stumble along,
Falling, often, over broken memories, though in my past is where they belong!
But out they creep, setting themselves below my feet.
Ready and willing, happily they kick and climb until I am beaten.

Then they rest around my head, where they feast on my regret.
Clouding my mind with ferocious fog, till all I can see is the smog.
Its choking me from the inside out, how can I fight? How can I flee?
When the demon destroyer I'm fighting is within me!

With a final battle cry, I tear this hideous beast out from behind my eyes.
Screaming and crying it has a go, but this time it doesn't know...
That I am stronger now, here: Whilst the beast slept soundly,
Assured that he had me beaten and broken. I had but carried on walking.

I walked, I crawled until the scene before me was the wood:
Smelling the burning, hearing the crackle and the snaps.
Tasting the fire, breathing it in, until it filled me, engulfed me.
Enriching me, for I had been here many a time before...

I had grown immune to the thick acidic smoke; it didn't bother me at all.
The smoke that hit my eyes didn't sting any longer, it cleansed them.
But the effect it had on the monster was, as at first it had been to me, debilitating.
I won, once again I was crying beside the burning bridge.