You think you're being honest with yourself. But you're not. What do you think honesty is, a fist breaking bones and teeth over and over? Not always. It only seemed like it, for a long time. Close enough for your comfort. Load-bearing and well-insulated, this wall is a life's work in progress: fourteen years in, six feet deep, god knows how high.
The worst thing is silence. Or maybe talking. The wrong kind with too much thought behind it. You'd rather be a storm: the one everyone sees coming but no one fully expects. Air and pressure and noise and pain grinding together, rising, wild, blistering and burning you raw from the inside till you almost can't bear it, unburdened by walls.
But after an eternity at the summit, even your mind will wander. Why must we always be born and reborn in fire, plummet screaming down the face of a cliff? Is it supposed to be poetic or something? It's exhilarating. It's exhausting. It's all you've ever known. And you're just a small baby bird being flung into the air, wings still tiny and useless, learning to fall and hit the ground.
Very hard. Repeatedly.
Author's note: A poem and accompanying sketch (cover image) completed for the YuYear event on tumblr. The prompt was "Ordeal". The cover image can be seen much larger on my tumblr (username maiji, tagged #yuyear) along with thoughts from the art side.
As soon as I saw the prompt word, I immediately thought of the stretch from Yusuke's trial of accepting the Spirit Wave Orb all the way through to the climax of the Toguro fight.
One of the things I found fascinating when watching the English dub for the first time was discovering what nuances had been added or taken away from the version I was most familiar with. It was interesting to see what fans accustomed to the English script took as givens that were relatively new to me.