The pressure grows and grows as your chest slowly gets tight.

Day after day you prepare for the fight.

The comments and snears, opinions and snickers.

If only your skin were a little bit thicker.

Your thoughts tear you down and they eat at your soul.

Your knees shake and buckle as you take blow after blow.

So empty and broken, confused and distraught.

As you look back and realize how hard you have fought.

Blood, sweat and tears you have sacrificed without thinking.

So then why are you now undoubtedly sinking?

Because unlike the others, you were destined for more.

It's only from ashes, a phoenix does soar.

After defeat and sorrow, a phoenix succumbs.

For it knows from the ashes its new start comes from.

For when it appears though the phoenix has lost,

It knows success still comes at a cost.

So it gathers itself from the soot and the ashes.

Out of rubble it rebuilds itself with love and compassion.

The phoenix grows wings out of loss and despair

And all of a sudden it seems all too clear.

The phoenix doesn't care if life tears it apart,

Because life has no power on the phoenix's heart.

Untouched and pure, the phoenix heart beats,

For the phoenix will never acknowledge defeat.

The phoenix destroys itself to smoke and to ashes,

So it can rise from the wreck full of love and of passion.

The phoenix knows the secret that we so desperately seek,

That words destroy and dream's rarely keep.

Unless you have the courage the phoenix possesses,

Then you till will rise and turn defeat to successes.