Little Danny Boy

(This was my recounting what memories of my first nervous breakdown I still had at the time this was written. My first breakdown occurred upon my returning home from school after turning around the campus in April of 2002. -JPH)

Little Danny Boy                         May 8, 2005

The night before the morning,

Shadows creeping through the mists

Surrounding the crying boy

Before he is doomed to a fate

Worse than death.

At first, quiet, serene,

Then raucous like a wrecking ball

Slamming against his personal wall,

Wrecking the self-edifice

He had worked so hard to build

Since day one of his youth-filled time,

The night proceeds to progress

Little Danny Boy towards oblivion.

Nerves rattling his bones, his skin,

Teeth chattering again and again,

He drops to his knees in pain,

And rocks forward, then back,

Like his grandmother in her rocking chair,

Tears rolling down his cheeks.

Niagara Falls has set in.

The perennial flooding of the fall,

And what is he going to do about it?

He's broken now. Shattered glass.