Heavy. Duty.
Responsibility is weighty.
Weighs on the burdens,
on the burdens that mount.
How the distance mounts over
the months. The years. The tears.
The fears. The identities.
The identities we partake in,
we personas we put on,
we pretend to, we play with,
the personalities
we scrub away to start again.
Once again. Heavy. Duty.
The responsibility of owning
the ownership,
of always ending up
on our own. Heavy.
Shedding parts of ourselves
like snake skin, too thin to shake.
Thin are layers we’re left with,
the leachers leach their lot
and leave us with little.
Little are the layers now.
Lighter. But Heavy.
The Duty.
Responsibility is heavy
in the hands of just one.
In hearts not always held.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

From an earlier series of poems entitled Between the Bone and the Broken