Who We Were, Who We Are

I've spent years soul-searching before I realized I don't have one.
Thinking through the thoughts I thought I had fought to the back of my
mind. Turns out they're just intwined in the recesses, and my guess is
as good as yours as to how long they plan to stay.

They plan to haunt us.

Why do you serve to be the glue that holds me together. You're
the concrete under my worn feet walking this broken road that rises and
falls like the lungs of a person doomed to die.

I was the guy who sat at the back, stabbed in the back by everyone I
knew. Called names I thought were a frame around my life I couldn't
break. I'd spend my recess writing to de-stress, the only thing my
classmates couldn't take.

But there was another. The father and mother of a family where I was
the ungrateful son.

You.

A boy who'd spend his days collecting trays for shit wages. Missing school because his face was too ugly to be cool.

If they tried to talk you'd walk away. In class you would sit and stare
blankly and frankly I don't care if they think you're ok because you're not.
The knot in your stomach still tying you to the times in gym where your
clothes, hand-me-downs looked down upon, and socks stolen by jocks,
laughing at a kid trying to make the best of what he's got.

But we wouldn't cry.

They tell me it's just 'playing', but for some kids it's pay
to play and the cost is a life. We try to cut away the pain and the
shame and to forget the endless rain of abuse. Try to swallow all the ills
with a few pills and a bottle of cheap swill from the store down the
street.

This was the road beneath our feet.

Defenseless, young, the system systematically let us down, left us
part of the million faceless, wearing our jester's crown. We were
sunburnt for trying to touch the stars, to rise above our apparent
place, the rash for being rash and stepping from the ashes of our
mistakes.

This road is broken in half, we're on separate sides of the same coin standing in the same place somehow in different worlds.

Who knew you'd die first..