Trauma

it’s a shadow in my brain

a lurking, creeping, whispering thing

that doesn’t shy from light

but swallows it

if I do nothing

if I do nothing

if I do nothing

it will block me in. block, block, block

if I step into it, let it feed off me

and find my blood is its poison

my pulse is its poison

my heart is its poison. beat, beat, beat

it will shrivel up

and become nothing more than a stamp-sized portrait

reminding me that it rules

no longer

a memo note

it happened, it happened

but still I can stride

 

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Fishing Net

The barrage comes hard,

I’m forced down to the depths of my own emotions

every time we discuss it.

I’m caught in the rewind

while clawing up at the future, the now.

It will take years

to peel off every layer of doubt I’ve accumulated,

every word that the self-proclaimed judge and jury

have balanced on my shoulders.

But I can always look into your eyes.

My moonlight

in the starless night.

From bones it grows

The night is fading and you can taste morning in the air.

The vague shapes swallowed by the darkness

awaken again as the flowers begin to open.

Not skulking monsters as they sounded, shrieking,

without the light,

but the bones of buildings covered in green carpets,

rich and plush and full of a life that was once

cut back hard, considered a weed,

a pest, a threat to those who hoped to dwell.

Time’s mark is clearer than footprints

and has no patience

for those who refuse to see it.

It grasps them all with tight fingers,

pushing them aside so the first ones

to arrive at the waterhole can have their fill

and flourish

as they should have for all these years.

 

Of shadows and memory-hunters

Passing hands connect. Briefly. Branching out into a thousand minds, forcing roots around synapses. Shadows flit around: drooling mouths, gleaming eyes. Adrenaline beats in every cell, spilling out through the leaves that quiver as the prey’s sweat-filled fur touches their tips. Great lakes fill the indents left on the muddy ground, imprinted by weighted hearts. Seeking.