It Always Does

The blissful sours...

It always does, though the expiration date changes

I’ve never known a life without pain

La douleur exquise, as the French would call it

A line from 'Sex and the City,' but a stark reality just the same

They say you cannot appreciate the happy times until you truly know sadness

That one cannot understand the depths of pleasure without pain…

But having known the taste of both, I sometimes wonder if

a dull and rolling satisfaction may be more sustainable

The grandeur of delicious excitement is the manic episode before another fall

We snark at contentment and

turn our noses up with the rendering of settling

yet our souls search for a place of peaceful existence, on repeat

Is there a difference?

Can you identify which is an absolute source of truth?

Are pleasure and pain even able to exist in a realm without the other?

Can you separate the fibers of their fabric and extract their DNA?

Would you recognize either just the same?

A little girl lights up at trinket boxes and feathers

There is magic there. The whole world is her oyster

decorated in tiny giggles and simplified yearnings

When did we start dreaming of more complicated lives?

Looking back, were these fairytales masking poison?

A drug to delude into delirium

The blissful sours...

It always does-