Tell me about your tragedy. <br />Spread it all over me, <br />layer over layer, <br />like buttercream frosting <br />on sponge-cake, <br />until any crumb of my own <br />is smothered beneath the <br />weight of your sorrow. <br />The odds of us sharing some <br />similar ruin are not as <br />high as say…a woman <br />over thirty-five getting killed <br />by terrorists before getting married? <br />Give me silvery music to whelm <br />the wailing of the night, <br />and wrap me in it, <br />plucking the strings of my <br />own suffering as you enswathe me, <br />tuning them to some pleasing, light opera. <br />I like you, might even love you, <br />yet there’s something undeniable about <br />the satisfaction of feeling exempt <br />from a condition worse than my own. <br />What is real is that neither of us <br />want to hear about the <br />greater circumstance of the other. <br />It lowers the loser’s odds considerably, <br />of ever overcoming. <br />This strange nature is the thing <br />which keeps us moving, <br />despite the laws of probability.<br /><br />Tara Teeling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-truth-about-sympathy/
