Notes from a prison once called home
“She was there in the store for him to look at... But he didn’t want her talking after him no more. … She was there for him to look at, not to listen to.” - Zora Neale Hurston
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Filled with a loud silence
This house
You enter
I watch
Remaining distant
Knowing that merging closer
Would destroy me
Irreparably
I don't want to turn into you
Heart erased
Now void
Venom seeping
Through your veins
Blinded by wrath
for a once-loved enemy
I want to look away
drawn to view
a soul that time
resentment and fury
has severely misshapen
I was in your presence
spectator to your transfiguration
into a nemesis
fervent on ensuring
I become weak
broken
a distant memory
Remember our first year
how Grace
and Mercy
walked with us
stayed without invitation
and resided with us
until we evicted them
no warning
no remnants
no sign of their
existence in our lives
We are facing each other
armed
On one side
I stand with my self-righteousness
and impatience
On the other
you sit
legs akimbo
holding your pride
and pain in front of you
shielding yourself
from my vulnerability
Oaths to complement
and cherish
that transformed into
enmeshment
and entrapment
losing air each minute
as your presence sits
on top of my chest
unrelenting
pressing further
harder
deeper
I cannot breathe.
I will not disregard
the truth
that I too, have lost sight of you
trying to remember
who you used to be
only familiar with
what you were
never capable of doing
until now
Unwilling to
resuscitate empathy
words of kindness
long forgotten,
acts of selflessness
disappeared
from the
recesses of our consciousness
You are not my greatest enemy —
That is me
the one who allowed you
to make me insignificant
invisible
I sanctioned myself
to forget who I wanted to be
in the name of
love, family and peace
I am in awe
how quickly
love can mutate into
indifference,
then resentment
layered with torment
and an overpowering scent
of vengeance
wafting through the air
My personhood
no longer visible
irredeemable
in your world
I am reduced
to an inconvenience
that needs to be
first humiliated
second punished
then eliminated
because she could
not be controlled
because she would
not conform
“You can't make homes out of human beings.
Someone should have already told you that.”
- Warsan Shire
So here we are
glances filled with ire
still and separate
with a synergistic wrath
expanding the distance
between us
I want to be free
from this union
that held me for
so many years
in a place
deep in my imagination
holding me hostage
powerless to accept reality
Longing to leave
Gasping for air
in this raging fire
I find the exit
through billows of smoke
coughing and charred
barely breathing
but I can still whisper
go find your peace
far from me
and
I exhale
for the first time
dark thick soot
escaping my throat
releasing the chokehold
so I can vomit my truth
Yes, it is dark here
where I’ve buried myself
into the ground
away from the sun
away from the whispers
away from love
Lying in limbo
Waiting to be safe again
And one evening,
a beautiful revelation
will find me
and home will once again
be my refuge
finally able to sleep
until I see the sun again
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