You Would Do Their Work For Them Poem by James McLain

You would do their work for them,
drag my guts across the cold tile floors,
spill my blood with your own rage,
tear the thin curtain of my inner peace,
and call it love.

You would cut the lights,
leave me blind with your shallow lies.
Only to claw my ears with screams
when I find the door.

No personal boundaries, no mental maps,
just the darkness of your chaos—
a world where nothing fits,
not even the church, we once believed in.

But I stay.
Because your pain is all I know,
a symphony I have grown to know by heart.
And you?
You would do their work for them,
but I hand you all their tools.