"Reflecting"

Inspired by "Will I?" from the Broadway musical RENT, composed by Jonathan Larson

I walk down the street

The faces stare at me

I feel trapped inside

My life has become insignificant

I hear the words spoken over and over

To live life to the fullest,

To disregard time and soldier on.

In the end, time will not matter.

Death could knock at my door

When I least expect it;

Today, tomorrow, forty years from now

It is the fate of us all.

What matters to me, though,

Is how I go, how I've lived.

Will I walk bravely or cower?

Can I go on pretending everything's normal

When it so clearly is not?

The words keep repeating,

I keep thinking

"Will I be shamed or will I go proudly?"

And more so, "Am I going alone?

Who will be there when I'm desperate,

Alone, unloved, and in the dark?"

Will there be light?

I start begging, hoping, wishing

That this isn't my life,

That my life is not the one crumbling.

And then I look beyond the camera lens,

And I see into the eyes of people, my friends,

Suffering the same pain,

Praying to recover,

Begging for salvation.

What I see sparks my mind,

Somehow I smile;

I know now that I'm not alone.

Author's Note: I wrote this poem for my Music 100 class. The project could be anything pertaining to music, but the poetry option said that you could listen to any music you wanted and describe your feelings through it. What came out was this: almost an internal monologue that could double for any character. It may slide a little towards Mark, just because of the camera lens line, but seeing as how every character came in contact with that camera, it could be interpreted any way. Read, review, all that jazz.