Eryn Morne | + Follow Poet |
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The Poisoning of My Mind

There are days the sun drags itself across the sky like a wounded thing,
and I follow behind it,
meek as a shadow no one asked for.
My feet walk the same road to the mailbox, rocky and too long,
and still I walk it.

Beside me, the hemlock grows.
Tall and soft, almost beautiful.
It does not beckon.
It does not need to.

Some days, I eye it the way others eye lovers.
It stands there in its stillness,
whispering in a world that shouts.
And I wonder if quiet could be a kind of mercy.

It is hard to exist here.
Harder, maybe, to pretend I want to.
To stitch meaning into mornings,
to answer the question of “why”
with anything but silence.
Some days, I am all ache and effort.
Some days, I am nothing at all.

And still I walk.
I walk, and I glance
at the hemlock.

I want to stay.
I do.
But wanting is not the same as being able.
And some days, I feel like I am made of glass
and apology.
I am tired of both.

I often see the hemlock,
I see how easy it would be to drink,
from the root, from myself.
No spectacle.
No hero.
Just stillness, at last.

I know how bitter it would taste.
But bitterness is not new to me.
I have swallowed worse.

My greatest fear
is one day replacing my reasons to stay
with the venom from the hemlock.
That I will deflower it
just as the world has deflowered me.
I will fill my cup half full,
and as I sit beside the road,
I will drink.

And as I swallow my fate,
no cars will pass,
no one will come to save me from the poison
I pulled with my own hand.

And that will be enough.

Copyright © Eryn Morne | Year Posted 2025

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