A Shadowed Memory

I originally wrote this in prose. But it divided up too perfectly to be left like that. Also, this is the darkest my brain has ever been. Thankfully this is a piece from a long time ago...

The lonely room in which I have locked myself

Has, as of late, turned from a protective keep

To a bitter, bar-less prison I have no wish to escape.

For I am a tortured soul that wishes death upon the world

But I am no murderer of the hope that lies within it.

No, it is far beyond me to kill such a thing;

I merely steal it from others in the depths of the night

In a sorrowful attempt to regain my own.

There is nothing for me outside these walls

I have built with my own hand, with slow precision

As to let not a single thought or feeling leak out.

There was once a time when I showed compassion

To the weary and broken, and let fall many a tear

For those who came to me for help.

My heart has since hardened

And compassion seems but a distant memory.

I feel no burden of sorrow for this world,

For each of its problems are self-made,

And yet the blame for such things consistently falls

On the few, the innocent still left in this place. 

The room remains dark as I light a candle to write by,

The only effects are the shadows now drawn across the red-black walls.

Once again in my own arena of thinking,

I sit and wait for something to happen, something,

Anything that may have a chance to break the silence.

I call loudly, fully aware of the reverberating echoes

That carry my calls to the wind.

I still do not know the true reason behind my calling,

But I believe it may be a combination

Of the silence and the loneliness, and the knowledge of,

But not willingness to admit my incarnate need for help. 

The shadows engulf me with a horrific chill,

And as time moves deeper into the night,

I begin to understand that no one will come to answer me.

As the clock screams the midnight hour,

And I have given up waiting for rescue,

There is a soft knocking on the heavy wooden door.

Though I have been jarred from my prior state,

I believe this is a door that I should open.

Moving slowly from the table,

The flicker of the candle bites my arm as I pass it,

Leaning over to unlock the nine bolts

That chain me from the world.

One by one I unlatch the bolts and peer out

Into the dark hallway that stares back at me.

Huddled on the doorframe I find a girl I once knew,

But have not seen in many a year.

Tears streak her mud crusted face as she sobs into the wall.

There is blood covering her arms and her ripped, ragged clothing.

I pick her up and drag her into my domain,

Carefully relocking the latches as I place her on the floor.

She lands with a sickening thud and cries out.

Hope comes to me now; hope, who has already prostituted herself

To the disgruntled workings of society.

She comes, beaten, raped, starved, and shunned,

Willing me to put her out of her misery and myself out of mine.

No, I did not steal her this night; she came of her own accord,

But I cannot kill her- she is the only thing left for me to value,

But somehow she has managed to wed herself to all my pain.

All others have abandoned me to my fate and her to her own.

Hope, the only one that remains now bids me

Take a sword and run her through, for when she is gone,

Each of my problems, and fears, and hates go with her.

If she stays, she will destroy me,

But I do not find it in my heart to murder an old friend.

This newfound recurrence of compassion will be my downfall.

She is hurt and bleeding, and cries deep, dark tears

As she recounts to me the horrors that were inflicted upon her

With a menacing brutality I have seen nowhere

But the hallways of my own mind.

It is at this moment I realize

She has endured each of these broken realities for me,

That each of her tears fell for conscious decisions I have made.

Yet she comes to me, me of all people,

Isolated from the world, a vortex of hatred and anger, seeking mercy.

I have long since snuffed my candle and write only by the light

Radiating from the fire in my eyes.

The sword above my bed catches the light

And scatters it as I reach for the bronze hilt. 

It feels heavy in my hand, a bitter burden that has always been mine,

A foreboding token of my weary paths.

I bring the blade onto the throat of this girl

Whom I once loved, and stop.

I hand it to her, heavy hilt first, and tell her,

“Take my place and I will take yours.

Take my sword and I will take your misery from this world.

The answer to our pain is not your death, but mine.”

My neck is cut as an act of my own will. Thus I die to myself,

And in the hands of Hope I leave the sword

That will one day bring me back from death.

 

Reviews

[JoshiDx]

Walls are all too familiar a theme in the darkest places of your dreams.

Some of this seems a little rough but is very insightful all the same.