May The Shadow Fall Poem by Bethany Maxwell

Friendships are delicate things,
The brush of a feather of distrust,
Can cause it to crack,
The settling dust of uncertainty and suspicion,
Can cause a reaction of shattering.

It starts out small, usually,
A crack beneath the surface of shared opinions,
Separating similar tastes,
Away from underlying tensions.
Then it starts to come apart.

A broken puzzle,
It's pieces coming apart,
Changing their shapes,
No longer fitting together,
But fighting with each other's edges.

Where once was common ground,
Now lies a sea of second thoughts,
Analysis of the past,
Causing tsunamis of new resentments,
And the ending of civility.

Where there was once petty announces,
Now lie overwhelming discontent,
Inability to cooperate,
All leading to tinges of hate,
Seeping through the growing cracks.

When friendship is constructed on a foundation of rank,
Age, superiority, and an attempted authority figure,
It's destined to fail.
For one day the younger, "inferior" one will awaken,
Seeing the light in the wrongs, they will fight.

They will begin to see how desperate they were,
And how they let into the trap the other lay before them.
Then, slowly, they will see that they deserve so much more,
That they have been standing in a shadow cast by a deceiving authority,
They will see this and they will no longer sit and take it.

That's when the cracks spread,
When the abused fights for equality,
And when they see how wrong they were to trust the other,
How no matter how good they thought the friend was,
That all it caused was pain, stress, and misplaced distrust.

These are the tiring friendships,
The friendships born to die.
It's tragic, really,
Spiraling into an inevitable distraction,
The aftershock depending on the reactions.

These are the most daring friendships,
For when the superior shadow dwindles,
They act as a black hole,
Dragging any and every mutual party in,
Deceiving them to see their way.

One can only pray the right will win,
And the shadow will fall,
One can only hope the right will be believed,
And the other's deceptions will be unveiled,
Oh how I long for the right to prevail…

I don't know what I would do if I lost.

by: Bethany Maxwell
January 8,2013
(c) 2013