What is the sound of resolve?

A crackling

Fanned flames of frivolous hopes framing the doubt dressed in darkness?

The firewood of punctuated ululations severing ties that leave

you on your feet but do not feed you on your toes.

 

A scraping

Rubber licking asphalt one grain of hard-fought grey after the other?

Barren boots warring against the smattering of wet skin on

fiery hard packed ground

Toppling time and again because you knock yourself down as often as the world does.

 

Like nothing

Silence so absolute with a world not watching

Breath held, waiting interminably for the other shoe to drop

When you know you never intend to let go of the laces

you cling to; because you are in control.

 

Bet it looks like a shaky breath-

Arms crossing, folding into one’s chest

Mouth agape, teeth bared, eyes focused

Above the “insurmountable best”

 

And it feels like a reckoning

Like fear and faith, or fear alone

or an emptiness – a will wilted, but alive

Whispering secrets of your unmalleable core;

Bone to unshakeable bone.