A seed grown in shadow
When the seed of fear is planted in minds,
It germinates in brains as a tormentor—
Sometimes sown by a whisper,
a shadow,
a lie repeated twice.
When illusion becomes reality,
And starts by making the heart
skip a beat,
then more of its beats,
then all of its beat.
It creates monsters in our eyes in the dark,
Born from our own imaginations.
And it can make them fly,
swirl,
drawl,
crawl,
and do anything—
Make our hairs stand on end,
Our feet walk on eggshells,
on a slippery slope.
It can crimp us into a shrimp.
When it creeps into our grip,
It brings a nice gift of heebie-jeebies—
That send us on a purposeless,
Directionless meander,
Like a chicken, head just severed
and unrestrained.
Fear teaches our hands to fight,
And our legs to take flight,
But it’s never patient to judge us right,
Even when fear is out of sight.
When the seed of fear is well tendered,
Fear can even make us no longer
fear fear.
When its taproot has eaten deep
into the hypothalamus,
Then the mind is already gnawed by monsters
That, time and again, we created
out of nothing.
Copyright ©
Maclawrence Famuyiwa
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