Elephant

 

Distilling to an essence… 

the hurt that tortures me 

Abandonment put succinctly 

choked on Hail Marys… vacuous screams

Primordial deity grooming,

ravenous... precision’s glee

Feeds on fear of rejection,

makes my minuscule world…

much smaller, than should be!

S…  t…  r...  e…  t…  c…  h…  e…  d, 

opaque,     bereft…

drought’s watering hole of death!

I tightrope bloodshot caverns,

in sleepless, wraith-like dreams

I'm bridled, whipped and shackled…

makes marionette of me

Hangman’s narcissistic magnetism 

I’m their bloody… prodigy!

Litanies of suppression

made me… sacrificial dream

 R

      e

           c

        g    o

      n         i

         i    I

                 past the ether…

of darkling’s shadowed fiends

Who I somewhere, somehow, must have… 

once misread as friends 

Glinting in the moonlight... 

they retrace my railroad scars 

Ribbons of silvered destiny

now etched upon my pores 

Frayed rivers shimmer, seeping...

way beyond reprieve

Charred, buried, brittle skeletons...

cobwebbed calamity 

Blindly, try to begin over... 

but there’s no clemency 

The path is set in neurons paved…

dawn’s starting gun, it gleams

Beneath the all too familiar… 

gunmetal’s oppressive gaze

I’m preyed upon, 

whether they will or won’t…

this time leave me for dead 

Please make it stop... I beg of you!

Please!!! Just let me be!

Is there no peace to find… anywhere?

No security... out of reach?

No safety... without a catch?

Somewhere, don’t have to bleed…

into oblivion’s vast nothingness  

Somewhere, memories’ bones...

aren't stacked in grief  

Somewhere, I haven’t been before... 

so can’t recall the way 

Where all, don’t have an exit plan…

I’ll no longer feel ashamed

Somewhere behind a door called ‘Home’… 

where I will not fear the latch 

Perhaps my lot’s just foot-printed voids…

the size of elephants

Where soulless ghosts of

                                                 t 

                                           s         u

                                        d              m

                                      e                   b

                                        e                l

                                            w      e

still haunt my harrowed heart 

My graveyard mind, trauma’s resting place,

scribed, indelible... tomb-headed shards

As despite blood pacts, gestures grandiose, 

all who swore they loved me... left!

Setting my life’s fawning precedent, 

as branded ‘expendable’… is hard to forget!

© Debbie Razey 2023 - Violet Moon Poetry