9/29/2023

“It’s a struggle, and it always will be. Sometimes the darkness comes on, as though I’m falling into a pit. I have to look at the darkness, and, in an act of pure will, try to put a space of objectivity between me and it. To say, “Okay, there it is. It’s haunting me”. It doesn’t cure me, but it does allow me to function and, inevitability, work out of the horror, knowing that yes, the horror will come again, and know that yes, I can survive it”. -MMV

The oxygen in the room suddenly was out of reach

I found myself in a vacuumed sealed room

His voice became clear and slow

The presence of others became distant

I wanted to run

But my feet were rooted to the ground

My face felt hot

Like a spot light had been turned on above me

He spoke

He put words to something I never could

I worried others would smell me

See that I too, in fact, spoke this language

I felt the rumble

Coming from a place long silenced

The monster that lives in me has been awoken

Fear moved through my skin

It ached

I desired to rip it off

Start fresh, start clean

I might as well been standing there naked

Then I could make sense of the noise

Make sense of the current moving through me

Had I known the earth would come up from beneath me…

I wouldn’t have come

I can speak to darkness

To Her mess

But this, there are no words

It’s a language

One I didn’t realize I spoke until that very moment