Living Ghosts

Note: I wouldn't assume.  You'd be wrong.  If anything, very old emotions from my childhood - sometimes they resurface. But I HATE it when the words don't come out right.... Just don't do it justice.  Scribbles on a page...

I hate myself for caring

For ripping wounds forever open

That should have closed long ago

For caring about nothing

That never happened

Never existed

I try to kill the pain

The memory

But instead resurrect it yet again

All that never happened is a living ghost

A demon that haunts my dreams

Though I lie to myself as I speak

You were always a ghost

Someone I deserved and yet didn't

You are beyond my reach

And were before we'd ever met

You were never real

The lie I tell myself to shield my heart from the cruelty

No one saw your face through my eyes

No one heard your voice through my ears

Dreams can die, but are not forgotten

You have a name, but it is not spoken

A fairy-tale that can kill the soul

Release the beast instead of conquer it

* * *

I am a trigger for my own anger

As well as all around me

Who lash out at the pain.

They do not see a person

They see the emotion they must fight.

A part of everything and part of nothing

What identity is left when they've all taken their bites

Beat out their own judgment?

I am pinned to the wall between myself

And a self-avenging army 

Those who know see the sweetness

But knowing nothing of the rage

See the frantic expression

But not the desperation

See the forgiveness

But not the resentment

Who are any of us

Without the emotions that drive us?

*  *  *

Lost in a shapeless shadow

Cast so long ago

Stained by another that is ill-fitted

Resembling even less of the truth.

Hidden by a label I did not earn

Have spent my life trying to tear off

Exercise in the utter futility of my every effort

They kill with brutal subtlety

Words, not weapons

Good intentions are their preferred poison

To alleviate their own guilt.

They - we ALL kill how we were taught

Or succumbed long ago

God forgot to take me.

*  *  *

How much longer am I expected to endure?

How long must I linger?

My bones ache

The core of me still bleeds out red

I bleed as I was taught to bleed

And still fear the chastisement for presumed rebellion

Rebellion to us was emotion that spilled over

Without a decipherable voice

You pushed me towards it

Not warned me away

Don't hate me for how YOU define me

You love the lie and hate the "liar"

*  *  *

Ill-fated to walk this twilit road

Seeing, but not knowing

Knowing, but not clearly

Understanding much, knowing little

A sentinel scarecrow who knows the fields so well

And knows nothing of the harvest