What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but how much stronger do I have to be?

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,

but how much stronger do I have to be?

Can someone tell me the truth

about this mystical reality

claim that calls for help will be answered,

that we should place trust in humanity?

Yet the stories we hear over time and space

are those of dissent, violence and cruelty.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,

but how much stronger do I have to be?

To say the light of life must be found from within

but not in its entirety

is to say power exists where we cannot see,

like prisoners of our own being,

in the worldly realm of reality,

liberation is a dream of solidarity so freeing.

but this strength is not to be lusted for,

sought after like rain in a drought.

It does not come with riches,

or black and white paper bridges

between people torn apart by

open wounds of the painful past.

It is present in the vulnerability

we try so hard to outcast.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,

and I don’t know how much stronger we need to be,

but if ever you struggle with waking up in the morning,

trust that the power is in you and me.