It was one of your worst nights.
You couldn’t see things clearly.
And yet, something had touched you,
Something resonated, the bells rang,
Right across your ears, you felt the truth
Of your body in your body, the bonework,
The bloodwork, infiltrated, the heart,
Never light as a feather, and you could hear the
Truth, and it hurt as it stepped in, into your mind,
Drastically.
The little girl that lived in sorrow and silence,
Stepping up, stepping forward, revelatory,
She showed you, she told you, this is what happened,
To you, to me, to us, these images are ours, within us,
Here I am, this is my voice, the forlorn dialogues,
The suffocated words, the language erased from my body,
Take me now, take it in, again, look at it now, look at my hands,
My feet, the belly, the head, how they talked to us, into it,
Their way into us, their words onto us. How nothing was done
And everything was done. Undone. I had been undone. And you came
Years later and now we see each other, you and I, crossing paths,
Sensing the truth that connected us, we were meant to detect each other,
Reach each other, you and I, weaved to intersect, trust, reconnect.
What are you going to do about it, now? Now that you feel clearly?
This is you, right in this moment.
Your life in your hands, it has always been you.
I still remember how you went back to your car, you
Could feel it, you were so overwhelmed, you could
Barely hold it in , and you cried so hard, the darkness was
Too much, there was too much of it, and you held the wheel
And drove and screamed, your face wet, you burst, across the
Highway that wouldn’t end, you couldn’t contain what had
Been revealed to you, what had lived within you, and you
Felt so alone, with all of it, facing the enormity of silenced
Actions, and you walked through the garden in the darkness,
Nothing scared you more, ever, in that moment, but you
Weren’t thinking, you walked past his shed, the unused shelves,
And you felt the weight of a childhood that nobody seemed to
Notice, and it followed you around, the dark whispers in the night,
You were steered, you knew where to go, you wanted to reach the tree,
Yours, that he planted, the one that would never grow, the one
That was held back, the one with a network of roots, reaching out,
Underground, invisible, the tempests within, electrocuted, shoved
Into a corner, and you didn’t make it to the tree, fear reached you,
You thought he’d wait for you there, again, unruly, you felt that it
Had been possible, that he had been reached, under the starlight,
Right there, the auburn darkness of the leaves, the sadness of the tree,
You wouldn’t meet him, there, not there, sacrosanct, hearing his voice
Again, asking why you weren’t there, when he asked you to, when he
Wanted to see you before his death, lucid, transparent, irreverent, unnatural,
Agonised, tormented, holding on to the skin of innocence, washing himself
Clean.
And I knocked on her door instead.
The door made out of glass.
The room, rebuilt. What happened there?
Why did you go to that room?
Who led you there? You scared yourself.
You scared her. You lost control and gained it.
Then you fell into her arms as you walked out
Of the basement, and you told her that he was there,
And she was adamant that he had been dead for years, she knew
What you were talking about and she held you,
You had shared the same monsters.
Croque-Melpomene 