The War Beneath the Skin
The War Beneath the Skin
No one saw the war within,
It hid beneath the fragile skin.
A normal face, a practiced grin
While something dark was settling in.
The body moved like all the rest,
It laughed on cue, it played its guest,
But every night inside its chest
A silent war refused to rest.
The Soul was soft, but not naive,
It felt too much, it could not leave,
It saw the lies that people weave,
The quiet things they don’t believe.
It carried light but light attracts
The things that live between the cracks,
The unseen force, the cold attacks,
The whispered lies disguised as facts.
And then it came the Spirit thin,
Not born of flesh, not held by skin,
It did not knock, it slipped right in,
As if the war had always been.
It did not scream, it did not fight,
It spoke in whispers late at night:
“Feel less… go numb… don’t hold so tight…
The truth you carry isn’t right.”
The Soul stood firm: “I won’t decay,
I wasn’t built to fade away.”
The Spirit smiled: “You’ll learn to stay…
Or I will tear your light away.”
And so the war began to grow,
Not loud but deep, too deep to show,
A quiet, endless undertow
That only broken souls would know.
At night the body lay in place,
But something slipped from time and space,
The Soul would drift without a trace
The Spirit always gave it chase.
It touched no skin, it held no bone,
Yet gripped the Soul like it was owned,
It bent its light, it made it groan,
It made the Soul feel not its own.
The body woke in breathless fear,
A racing heart, no danger near,
A silent scream no one could hear
A war that never disappeared.
“I’m tired now,” the Soul confessed,
“I cannot fight, I need to rest…”
The Spirit leaned in, unimpressed:
“Then let me give you something less.”
And so came poison dressed as peace,
A burning drink, a false release,
A fleeting high, a short-lived cease,
A way to make the torment cease.
Strange hands, loud nights, a crowded room,
Fake love to fill the growing doom,
A life that bloomed but did not bloom,
Just painted over inner gloom.
The body thought it found control,
The Spirit tightened up its hold,
For every time they numbed the Soul
It lost a piece it couldn’t hold.
The light grew faint, the truth grew thin,
The war no longer felt like sin,
The Soul got lost beneath the bin
And stopped remembering what it’d been.
“You see?” the Spirit softly said,
“This world is easier when dead
Not in the grave, just in your head…
Where nothing real is left to dread.”
But deep beneath the numb and haze,
Through sleepless nights and hollow days,
There burned a quiet, hidden blaze
A truth untouched by all the plays.
One night no drink, no noise, no lies,
No borrowed love, no disguise,
Just silence stretching wide as skies
And something in the Soul would rise.
The Spirit came, now strong and near:
“You are nothing without me here.
I fed your strength, I shaped your fear
Without me, you’ll disappear.”
The Soul stood shaking but awake,
Not whole, not pure, but hard to break,
It felt the weight it used to shake
And chose, for once, not to escape.
“You didn’t save me,” soft but clear,
“You kept me lost, you kept me here.
You fed on every drop of fear
But I am done with you, I hear.”
The Spirit stilled for just a breath,
It lived on running, lived on death,
But now the Soul had nothing left
To hide behind, to mask, to suppress.
“I feel it all,” the Soul declared,
“The pain, the truth, the things I feared
And still I stand, still unprepared
But I am real, and you are spared.”
The Spirit weakened, starved of flight,
It fed on darkness, fear, and night,
But truth once faced, once brought to light
Became the end of all its might.
No sudden peace, no heavens wide,
No angels singing from inside,
Just this
The Spirit shrank…
The Soul did not hide.
“You may remain,” the Soul then said,
“You live in thoughts, you haunt the head
But you will never more be fed…
I choose to live. I’m not your dead.”
And so the war did not just end
It changed… it broke… it chose to bend.
For maybe life is not pretend
But something deeper we defend
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