Childhood Taught My Shadows to Speak
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| Artist Unknown |
Childhood Taught My Shadows to Speak
Some days I mistake survival skills for real personality. I laugh too quickly, apologize too often, and mistake silence for an incoming storm. Anger races when it finds me. Childhood trained me to hear thunder in teaspoons. Every kindness arrives wearing a fake mustache because I still expect betrayal to kick in the front door carrying flowers.
Then the whispering voice clears its throat.
"I am the creature who smells your darkest thoughts."
It prowls the rooms of my skull, sniffing out every insecurity like a bloodhound with a grudge. It calls fear - wisdom, and suspicion, it calls experience. It has terrible manners and impeccable timing.
I'm learning not to evict it. Just stop letting it answer the door.
Healing is less like becoming someone new and more like discovering the house was never haunted. Just overcrowded with ghosts who forgot they were dead.
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This Prosery contains the quoted line, from "Jaguar Song," by former US poet laureate Arthur Sze, and shared with those darkly thoughtful poets at DVerse Poets Pub.
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Chris, your prosery deeply resonates. Thank you for the insight within it.
ReplyDeleteI think the personification of that inner voice is well-written. Powerful insights about the after affects of trauma.
ReplyDeleteExcellent job! I really like the message and the darkness of self doubt and learned trauma response.
ReplyDeleteChildhood does teach us many lessons and we carry them with us throughout life. They live within and surface when one least expects it. That sniffing of insecurities fits so well with the message.
ReplyDelete