Vulnerability Drinks Milk of Human Kindness – Written Monday 17th February 2025 (Aged 49)

Vulnerability Drinks Milk of Human Kindness

I am sad because it feels like a decision made
is a decision made not by me,
but made by others who stand round with their spades,
urging me to clamber into the freshly dug grave.
Some things, some things in life are just too strange.
Rewards earned, suddenly they somehow form
the outer shell of my own grave.

You leave the royal court and then you move on,
knowing that people are fickle
and that their praise of you can never last too long,
and before long you’re in one of those pickles.
And for every day of being right,
I am sad because in the end
I just end up being wrong.

In my mind I was undervalued,
but I put my hand up.
It was the choice that I made.
And in the end you live by what you choose,
but no one wants to feel disregarded.
No one wants to feel like they always lose,
and that in turn they are always easily used.

Vulnerability drinks the milk of human kindness,
but vulnerability comes with degrees of blindness.
And now it’s time for me to leave,
to pack up my memories and move on.
And it’s time for me to tell myself that I am worth more,
that there is more to life
than these crazy people who hang about in halls.
They are bunched up like a group of mental disorders.
They can never make you or leave you feeling small.

James Garratt – Monday 17th February 2025

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