To Be Not Trusted
by Odin Roark

Especially in youth…

To be not trusted
is to see all light as darkness,
all darkness as silence,
aliveness sleeping forever never.

To be not trusted
hurls one beneath the covers of death
where tomorrow’s future can be but dreamed,
never to realize yesterday’s seedlings for tomorrow,
that simple desire to be of petals,
not a tumbling weed among stunted blossoms.

To be not trusted
is to be banished adrift from the path
without compass or stars,
rendering breath but in a vacuum,
gentle touches as whispered memory,
fragrance becoming the surviving flower
desperate to bloom,
but imprisoned by life’s wanton mirage.