I've thought about it for a long time.
Wondered what it was and how it got there.
Watched it grow and grown scared.
But kept silent because how do you explain something that you can't name.
When we argue I can feel it,
and I keep silent because I'm scared if I open my mouth it will speak.
What they say about words spoken in the heat of anger is true, but this is different.
These words have been there for a long time
and the heat of anger wouldn't change them.
I try to think back to a time it wasn't there,
but it has taken the space my
innocence and happiness had lived,
gutted all the light out of it,
boarded up the windows,
and made it into a war room.
Took the naivety and fashioned it
into a cup to catch my tears,
used my tears to water the seeds
of confusion and doubt,
made the vines grow so strong
they strangled my heart,
strangled so tight that my heart
had to learn to grow around it to survive,
so that now when my heart beats it bleeds.
This war room holds my heart hostage,
a prisoner of a war I didn't remember starting
but that I will have to finish if I want to survive.
I try to think back to a time it wasn't there
but that's the thing about war.
It takes memories and replaces
them with nightmares.
I doubt now, more than ever,
whether there was ever a time it wasn't there. Whether it has always been there.
Perhaps at my birth it just chose me, out of a million different babies, me.
Disguised itself as a room
that I'd want to enter,
fashioned it with all the distractions in the center and when I grabbed at them and stayed
it closed the door and waited.
It took me one piece at a time,
very quietly put my feet in shackles,
chained me to my distractions.
Took my hands and made them busy with darkness, took my eyes and blinded me with my actions,
made my guilt whisper to me
until I couldn't hear the angels.
Took my mind and haunted it,
took my heart and twisted,
took my soul and damned it.
And now, as I sit in the war room,
I find that I have grown comfortable here,
I have found that I know it's corners well.
As I shake the dust that's collected on my bones,
I find that I hate it.
SK(art)
