Forecast: Increasing Visibility
by Marc Darnell
This could be the year that someone sees me,
exposed beneath this fogged skin of fear
now tearing slightly in a state of frailty—
this could be a gratifying year.
Instilled in me that all endure the same
trials of living, whittles of the will,
the only way I’m standing is to claim
I survived a harder cut of hell,
and climb a sharper angle of ascent.
I wish I’d grown more vivid from the people
clouding me, who blanketed and went
with fractions of my worth, but I will find
the strength to light a flame so I am seen
as wiser than the bullies I left behind.
Marc Darnell is a custodian and online tutor in Omaha, Nebraska, and he has also been a phlebotomist, hotel supervisor, busboy, editorial assistant, farmhand, devout recluse, and incurable brooder. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa and has published poems in The Lyric, Rue Scribe, Verse, Skidrow Penthouse, Shot Glass Journal, The HyperTexts, Candelabrum, The Road Not Taken, Aries, Ship of Fools, Open Minds Quarterly, The Fib Review, Verse-Virtual, Blue Unicorn, Ragazine, The Literary Nest, and The Pangolin Review among others.