Emmeline fought them from within.
No ground to stand on, it was all theirs.
Her stomach burning from the acid, the swallowed pain, gargling voicelessly.
Emmeline’s mouth a filter, a fearful prison, paralysed.
Her brain is a grand artist of distortion and exaggeration.
She is never the heroine of the story.
The worst case scenarios dominate her mind.
She crouches and torments herself.
They sucked her dry for a long time.
Words have never been her weapons.
She was never taught how to act in a fight.
How to protect herself, and to love herself enough to do so.
The saboteurs are hammering, feasting on her fears and self-doubts.
Whilst Emmeline hands out compliments and fake admiration to decrease their harm.
And calm their moods. She talks but doesn’t recognise her own voice.
Emmeline aggrandised them in her brain even though she knew that they were beasts
That she could handle perfectly.
Emmeline is a woman who drags herself out of misery.
She is familiar with the taste of it.
She uses them as a staircase out of their grip.
As she ascends she sees that they have always been this small and miserable.
She just was never in a position to see so clearly.
Stagnant perpetrators.
It takes such an effort to follow her.
As Emmeline climbs higher they effervesce and her brain lets go.
RECITAL BY CROQUE-MELPOMENE ON YOUTUBE
Croque-Melpomene 