I am a caricature of a whisper

My breath tries and fails to stand on its’ own

Not daring to speak my truth

The only escape through the pages I am named for

Furious fingers dipped in onyx ink, creating storms on paper

My eyes supply the rain

 

We build ourselves up carelessly

With no foundation, based on bricks of false smiles and beams of fake compliments

Never knowing what is real and what’s a guessing game

 

I lived with the Grandmaster of the game

I saw a predator behind his eyes

Glinting darkly in romantic candlelight

He showed me his teeth, an attempt at a smile

But all I know is that I felt like that child

Who wandered into the woods, a red hood her only armor

 

He was Jekyll and Hyde

Like an easy ember, he turned on the charm

With alarming ease could he turn it off

Quickly becoming a different man

Who masochistically enjoyed the flame getting out of hand

He danced in the fire and spoke other tongues

Often forgetting that I was the one 

Who picked him back up when he got too close

To the fiery tongue of terror constantly nipping at his heels

 

Able to look me in the eye and not know my name

My heart broke as he writhed out in pain,

But I kept the shards held closely inside

How could I be the one to lift off the blinds? 

To unmask his inner demons and let them plague us both

Or continue fighting this schizophrenic battle for him, alone

The battleground for this inner war took hold

My brain versus my heart

 

The evidence lay in the tangled pages of my sketchbooks

Hidden amongst my drawing lie confessions

Woven prose and knotted rhymes lay like rosaries

The chaotic debate leading to a moment of realization

As I wrote a poem I chose to call, “The Desire Not to Exist”

I stopped though

I knew I did want to exist, just not like this

Not steeped in stolen moments

Feeling desaturated in my own reality

Like the world was holding its breath,

Waiting for me to pick myself up

And become who I was meant to be

 

I sat him down

I told him

I found the courage to admit I was scared

Scared I was going to end up in the hospital

Scared that it would be him

Scared that there would be an incident that I couldn’t recover from

That I couldn’t forget

 

The storm I had conjured out of onyx, fury and tears

The one that stealthily sat in a journal he’d never seen

Had led me to blue skies and greener pastures

I could see here, that he was not the most important thing

As he laughed at me

Like a broken spell the game was over

He went from Grandmaster to pathetic boy

In the space of the snarl between his teeth as he grinned

The minutes ticked and the seconds tocked

Breaking their strict regime to stretch out the moment of his arrogance

He, not realizing he had lost and me, realizing I had finally won

 

With his absence came grief

But also

But mostly

Relief

 

I had gotten through the storm and let it lead me

The winds of my words, unconscious and effortless in the moment,

Revealed my truth

The secret musings of my inner self were played in prose and percussion

And led me back from a world drenched in greys

To one where nighttime is not just darkness and dreams

But instead comes to represent 

The possibility of sunrise.