Every Mask Casts a Shadow

There is a room,

and in this room there is a door.

this door is covered with serpents, scorpions, and spiders alike.

Behind this fortified location is what the enemy doesn’t want me to have.

What stands behind the door is a dream, a hope.

It’s what I’ve set aside for a moment in an attempt to be more mature,

and it’s been enveloped, it’s been stolen, a thing once seen, something thought lost.

There is a pain ripping down the avenues of the my soul,

a pain that could instantly initiate a civil war between the crushers in white.

A brewing anger that fuels these fingers through my palms.

A distaste that burns in every cluster, in every fiber, of every ridge of these legs.

And yet, all i perceive i can do is lie still.

It’s something like having each extremity chained and forming a perpendicular intersection

and feeling the subtle vibration of one varment beginning the trek to your soul,

to an ocean of a hundred scampering over every link that i’ve built in my mind.

But it’s enough.

You see, there really is no tumultuous vault.

Behind the door, lining the walls are only mirrors,

glaring reflections of what i’ve allowed the settling fog to cloak me in.

Every word that henceforth proceeds from my mouth

is like a beam of light penetrating the thickening soup

I’ve veiled myself too many times in the hope that i was protecting

when in actuality i was only driving the stake deeper.

There’s no more room for dualities.  There is no more time for an assembling of the court.

There is no more energy to trap what i’ve known all along.

Every step i’ve made this far i’ll surrender for the return of that hope,

but this time, there is a fire that burns more furious than the last.

This time, there is no pulling punches.  This time, there is only space

for the mud, blood, sweat, and tears to pass between my hand and my spear.