Parable of the Stonecutter

Strong hands and hard head,
he took up the hammer
years before the man he became
understood implications of choice.

The hammer swung slow but sure.
Muscles fired by alien expectations
that demanded perfection, true, square,
and never acknowledged 'good enough'.

Years passed, stones piling up like leaves
fallen from the trees around him.
Obscuring his vision, hiding the truth
and that hammer coming down, infinite.

'The next stone will be the best one yet'
A desperate declaration through clenched teeth.
But the next stone just led to the next stone,
slipping from hands scarred and bloody.

Winters passed, stones at eye level.
He looks up through the fog of his breath
to see the trap, a fortress inverted
with his heart at the center, in silence.

Sinking, falling, scoured knees in the grit
with air rushing from his lungs trying
to breathe in a world devoid of oxygen,
forehead pressing cold steel hard to the bone.

Spring, unnoticed, awaking suddenly
in a haze of heat and sweat and dull panic,
blinking hard against crystalline sunlight
as he stares at the hammer in his hand.

Baking heat in the unintentional furnace
arisen around him, with stones uncaring,
he raises the hammer with trembling arms.
Stones shatter, and his true choices begin.