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Unwanted Shadows

You could see the shadows on his empty face.

He left no trace of what he’s done to us but fear, peering inside a mind that was once so clean.

Now riddled with tales that you are not supposed to retrieve us from our own minds, you say. To this day, despite a mother trying her best and a father peeping under our beds, the only thing they’ve said and will continue to repeat, is that our heart beats are meals to your pointy teeth. Knives like tongues and fingerlike blades. You’ve talked victims in a comparison of philosophical wisdom. But your words were twisted, wicked in a way that there was no turning back. You showed a great lack of fear, because you put it in us instead of yourself. Our headaches were bells that you were here. We are the fear.

Lies of “I’m fine” only led to triumph. Not to you, but to the rough edges in the back of your mind riddled with chimes of horror story-telling that you were believing, cultist singing, breaking wings that you’d steal from us.

You turned relaxing to head-turning, silence into heart beats. Anything you've heard of so horrible, anything you’ve heard of, so beautiful. Withered away, into your own ways. You break the boundaries of evil, turning hell and earth so equal. Turning your twisted mind and ours so deceitful. We were dead the minute we laid eyes on them.

Because, you said, with repeats added and repeats misplaced, a heart like ours was meant to break.

But we will not bow down to a shadow that doesn’t belong in the light. We will not place our foreheads on carpets so you could replace our stitches we’ve sown ourselves into ligaments of thorns from a dead rose.

We will not crumble because of you,

I will not crumble because of me.

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