I Am Power

I am ordinary. I am you. There are times I want to curl up in a tiny ball and scream until my lungs give out…sometimes I do. When I know, I am not being heard, when I have exhausted every subtle tone and discreet, friendly, passive manner of saying, “You are hurting me. This is unfair. I need help or at least rest. Please give me space because you are smothering me. STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE! STOP TOUCHING ME!”

Until horror washes through me, and I realize you are perfectly aware that I cannot breathe. You can hear me. You have processed every word I have said and every statement I have made – you understand and empathize with the emotions that are behind my whispered, quieted, cautious, blatant, tortured pleas. Yet you continue to hurt me, continue to suffocate and abuse me, continue to draw every ounce of energy I make available to you because you have found my release valve. You now know how to siphon from the source. You’ve haphazardly, maliciously, unconsciously, purposely found the switch that controls my light - the one that stays on. With notices placed high and wide, visible on all sides that read “Do not touch.”

It’s connected to the most essential source.

The outlet from which everything draws its power. Interconnected in a compilation of extended cords allowing me to move and be placed in front of you. To be used at your leisure. All I ask is to not turn me off. To not flip my switch because everything must reboot again. I am forced backward to my base settings and have to restore everything one piece of a piece at a time. Flip that switch, and I am never made whole because I am born anew and have no idea of you yet. That bit has not been restored, and when it starts, when the idea of you forms. The warnings and inherited notions of caution flash yellow, then red - just before you flip me off again. For an instant too trivial to bear witness to, I see you for the monster you are. I behold the power you hold before I flicker to blackness, and my eyes open to you. Bright and renewed, I am nothing but confused as you restart your journey to invade and persuade my being to your whims.

You shut your eyes and wave through me, touching and feeling everything, peeking for the sport of it. To cheat at something already won. You saw the switch, you mapped a path, you knew the most straightforward route. But it would have been painless to just cut through. There was no fun in that. You wanted to trip over me. You wanted to step on and over obstacles that were just my being. You wanted to work through me. While I stand helpless about myself, directing you toward my easy demise. Telling you the path to my heart is through my chest, but you decided to dig in through my toes by taking the ground out from under me. You let me fall into you, and you let me drown in a dripping pool. The foundation is compromised, seeping into the earth and shifting all built atop and around it. Slowly sucking all towards it, tipping into an abyss, unaware of the impending topple. So, I feel comforted that what drowns me is draining itself into what will bury me.

This power you have, given but not taken away, just reformed; it means I cannot recognize you in all the forms you take. You come to me as so many different beings. Shifting before my eyes, as you inch closer and closer to my core. You appear to me as me. You repeat my words back to me as if I am the one hurting you. As if it pains you more to wield power, to take control. It’s me, my fault, and my undoing, to be placed under your foot. My cries for relief from the pressure put on my neck by your shows of strength are my own doing. I fell when pushed, I bled when cut, I screamed when punched. It was I who was inconsiderate to the strain on your legs: having to constantly stomp down; the tiring of your ears from having to hear my hollers. The pain felt in your hand from the impact against the bones of my face, the intolerable nuisance of blood staining your knife. The energy it must take for you to maintain this powerful stance. The drain it must be on you to be this fierce and foreboding. To continue to keep within your grasp: that intangible power. Attempting a steady hand at threading grains of sand through an eye of a needle. It seems you never stop to ask yourself, “Why?”

I see you in your weakness when you appear as myself. I see your switch is me. I fuel your need for light. I fulfill your need to see above it all. My shoulders are steady; they are solid enough for you to climb. How do I not help you up? When it’s a reflection looking back at me? When you see me as a ladder, and I see you as a partner. Let us help each other. I have the strength to push you up, but you lie and deceive once comfortably above, declaring you do not have the power to pull me up. There’s no room for me. There’s not enough for both of us to sustain and grow. I tell you I can give you legs. You tell me you would rather crawl while taking up my offer, all the same, taking my legs just in case. I tell you, what if I am to crawl too. So, you take my arms. You say, “two sets are better than one,” but I still cannot come.

The use of my body is welcomed, but I am not.

You say it’s because if I was in your position, I would do the same. I would take from you everything piece by piece, then say you have stolen from me. I would use power against power, and it would destroy us all. If I had what you have, I would be too afraid, too naive, too savage to use it correctly; to even know where to begin…

I let the power flow through and dissipate before I tell you that I peeked too. That I mapped a path, sought to bring you up to step up myself. That I gave you something shiny attached to a string to pull at, and it flipped a bulb attached to the relief of the people. I watch the strength drain from your face and be buried into your toes as you see yourself suddenly in a pit surrounded by your collection of limbs, only to see them as broken ladders, shattered at your feet. And you begin to plead, “You are hurting me. This is unfair. I need help or at least rest. Please give me space because you are smothering me. STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE! STOP TOUCHING ME!”

I can hear you. I can empathize with you. I understand you, and I pull you up next to me to stand on equal ground. Because I am power, and you cannot corrupt me.