We are just made of
the shattered universes of other people.
We are the broken pieces clumsily
put back together into a contorted mess

We bask in the shadows
that others have seared into this ground,
the walls around us, our own skin.

There is no way to escape it,
we degrade others,
break up the wall they built
to keep us out.

So we are left
with the fragments that
fall when they shatter.

But we don’t realize it
until the damage is done,
and we are left crunching the lost
edges of the barrier under our own feet.

When we get to the top,
we never see the pebbles below us
that we have ground into dust