Poetry on Odyssey: The Fear of a Failed Dream

From the beginning of our life, we are told that the road to success isn't smooth, but a bumpy road full of pitfalls along the way. We learn that we must always pick ourselves back up from our failures as they are our building blocks to success. But, what does it feel like when we are too afraid to build back a broken dream once again?

Her hand reaches out as she lays,

Grasping at the unknown,

And is met with a lone shadow, leftover from the darkness of night.

Her fingers claw at any possibility of a dream.

She's left wounded and broken from the effort.

To her, the notion of dreaming has become blackened, tarnished,

Because what is a dream if you come back empty before you even start?

What does it mean to fail at a mere thought?

What does it even mean, a dream? Is it made to be just out of reach?

Is it made only for the darkness, and when the sun comes out it slips away from the edge of your mind?

She wonders, as she lies awake and looks at what could have been.

To many and her, failure paired with recovery is inconceivable.

Too much of an effort, too little of a possibility for success.

The first defeat will always knock you down the hardest, she remembers hearing.

But she doesn't want to see a second one, she doesn't want to feel it a second time,

So she cowers away in the safety of ambiguity

Of what could've been and what will be,

Thinking that making it any more certain would make it even more painful.

She lets her hand falter and fall in the darkness,

Her fingers still spread out in the fading mold of a reach,

Trembling and weakly grasping at any remains of possibility,

Until it stills.

The wounds are cut too deep,

So she waits for morning,

She waits for the sun to come out,

She waits for the dream to vanish from the edge of her mind.

But until then, she's left to lay and feel the pain and surrender,

Unwilling to feel the failure of a dream once again.