it’s never about what happened but what it seems to have happened;

it’s always about what they say, not the truth;

the truth is wrapped in the silk of the hours;

there’s also a stain or a wrinkle

hidden in a fold of that smoothness: sometimes, without warning,

horror bursts out of it like a jack-in-the-box,

the gentle breathing of the rain becomes a scream -

a scream so piercing as if the whole world screams,

foliages tremble, mirrors break, birds fall from the sky; it is

the shrill wailing of a demon or a dying animal, it is

a sharp blade slashing the clean face of the day; 

i listen, petrified, as it claws at my sanity; i freeze and close my eyes;

i try to summon the things i loved and cherished

in the valley of ashes and dancing shadows:

bleak childhood,

corrupted innocence,

pain yet unnamed.

please, no mercy for me: that horror is of my own making.