The Fourth of July

You are making these walls. You are building them out of the words we say, and hiding in a fort of our vulgarities. The injection of our words has not made you better, but they have made you immune. You are a product of abuse. You are as hard as a bone where it was broken; you won’t break in the same place again.

You try to hide the bruises behind your ear. You’re looking for someone to love. I don’t have to look far to see who taught you that sharp tongue, and that critical eye. I don’t have to wait long before they come out. Anything good we say, anything at all, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because we say bad things too. You are consistent, unlike us. You constantly outpour the trash we fill you up with. It’s like those pictures of landfills we like to ignore. We keep making more and more trash each day. And you are here as a reminder of the cost of our transgressions, you show us how ugly we can be. You are showing me a reflection I don’t want to see.