Surrender

I used to drink in color
Before I knew your name
Long before you existed
I swam in a tiny sea
Of my own invulnerability
And I did no obvious damage
You drew no conclusions
Everyone seemed fooled by my confidence
And bristling independence

Drinking was a rainbow oil
Of ease and insouciance
Coating the inner emotional slopes
Lending precarious grandeur
To an irreparable lack of real autonomy

Now I am afraid
An outcast of my own esteem
Banished to the periphery
Among the permanently diminished
The carriers of a tattered flag
Of faded glories and tales of conquest
Trumped by details inaccurately assembled
And longing for connection
Redirection and salvation

Finally now
On this bleeding battlefield
Of self-invented heightened strife
I reach out
In simply asking for help
From a power greater than myself

I turn it over
To that power
In helplessness
Bereft of options
Empty of energy for fighting
Against my own
Surrender