The Song it Sings

You are the conductor to my orchestra of pain,

Each note, each sound, created just for me.

It’s catchy, it’s deafening, it gets all caught up in my head

Until I couldn’t possibly hear anything else.

Even if I wanted to.

Slowly insidious lyrics start to creep in,

Telling me what everyone thinks of me,

And what I think of myself.

Telling me what I should do about it,

And that even if I don’t listen now,

There’s always the next stanza for that.

Tortured bows screeching across strings taken from my heart,

Pitiful cries echoing in the emptiness of my chest,

Sometimes squeezing out from my paralysed throat.

There’s no hope here, no way to hush the musicians,

Not while the conductor drives them on.

And what match am I for him?

Listen to the words they sing, I’m no match at all.

Timeless music robs me of time itself,

There is no past, no future, only the aching present.

It doesn’t matter that the last verse ended,

Because this one never will.

You let the music build to a crescendo, then drop your arms,

Slowly drifting to silence, but the song plays on and on.

And no-one hears it but me.