Nerves of Steel

My brain is not broken
It is not chemically imbalanced

When steel is made
Iron and carbon dance
In flames

Some steel has lots of carbon
Some of it has little
There is brittle steel
There is ductile steel
It is never imbalanced

My brain is not imbalanced:
It is being held to the flame
This love is killing me
But I want it to
It is being held to the flame

When I was in college
I was studying a bar of steel
And I yanked it very hard
It did not return to its original shape
It had yielded
It was not chemically imbalanced

Atoms slip past each other slowly
They keep each other in place
But like neurons, their connections break
Neurotic energy runs rampant
And more connections break
It was never chemically imbalanced

So why does it screech in my mind
Why does it grind in circles
Why does it echo and clang
Reverberating whispers
The silence of an iron mine
The spectrum deadlines of carbon dioxide

I felt guilty for breaking my steel rod
I never meant to make it plastic
To make it irreparably damaged
To squeeze it with tension and trauma

I guess I deserve the same
On the yield curve of my brain
It was never imbalanced
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