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11/6/2022 11:14:35 AM Aidan McKinnon Posts: 1	At some point I lost it, I think it ran away. By the time I had noticed it was missing, it was too late. I remember being forced into the darkness, my eyes adjusting. Without light the world exists in a blurry mess of gray and black figures blending together into a flurry of nothing recognizable. I'm stumbling, I'm feeling my way around. I am but a small spec against a sea of shadows. I hear it. I'm running. Everything is loud and it's aggressive and begging for attention. It’s screaming or maybe I'm screaming, I can't tell. It's hot. I'm afraid. I'm small, confused, and lost. It's angry. I'm older now, It’s still dark but I've almost forgotten what the light is like. It’s like clockwork, my days filled with the constant static of a bad television signal. I hear it growling less now. Sometimes I see little red eyes popping out against the blackness. I have gotten used to it being there, I no longer pay attention to it or the fear. I have other things to do, other things to focus on. I'm learning to fight and protect myself. I'm learning how to exist on my own in a world that's not so kind, in a world where I am blind. Sometimes I miss what my life was like before the monster got away from me, when it was still in my care. I remember loving it and nurturing this creature that was a part of me. Before it got turned against me. Before. Before it was light. There were colors and smells and sights so beautiful that it would make you cry. I remember playing with it, running through the fields watching butterflies disperse and flowers bloom. I remember before. Finally, we fight. I'm stronger now, even older, wiser. I'm armed. The battle is bloody and cruel. The clanging of metal and cries of pain. Exasperated sighs and heavy breathing. Suddenly I'm brutally dragged into the light. Plucked from the darkness. I can't see and there's a ringing in my ears. Eventually I adjust and I see it. It too was forced into the light by cruel hands, the hands that put us in the darkness in the first place. It’s scared. It's disgusting. Matted fur, bloodshot eyes, claws bent and broken, its bones showing against the skin on its chest, its panting, its wheezing, its bleeding, I made it bleed, its crying, its hair wet against its face. We sit. Staring at each other, only I don't know if it recognizes me. There it is. My childhood. Now before me it's broken and beaten by a cruel cruel world. It was pulled away from me and tortured. This lovable thing that I had protected and cared for, broken. I want to fix it, I want to take it back to how it was before. Before it was dark. I crawl over and hesitantly reach out but it shoves away and curls within itself turning its back against me. I'm angry, I'm heartbroken, but I get it. We can’t go back to how it was before.
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3/9/2023 9:36:18 AM The Ant Posts: 9	It's really good! very good job portraying emotion through description, I think it might be interesting if you changed this poem to second person
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