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Demons |
Your demons remained
As this room
Shriveled in your absence,
Tell me,
Is this how we acquire our demons
For the first time?
This heart
Does not remember
Ever charging against such force
Until our door
Closed right behind you
For the last time.
The echo
Of our door slamming,
The swift vibration
Soon after,
The static
Of a radio,
Its sound
Becoming distant
As the silence
Spread across this room
And out to the streets
Still remains here,
Not surprisingly,
Along with your demons;
Their long, stretched out nails
Mirror their shadow
On the walls,
They travel toward me,
Make a mess
Of this room,
Scattering
Every sense
Of direction.
Is this how
We acquire demons in the first place,
Is this how
We start to devalue
Human relationships
Until they are
Stripped meaningless?
It starts here,
This questioning,
And continues in ourselves
Until no purpose
Is left within.
Then,
One day,
Someone comes
And destroys the questioning—
Someone in fact,
Did arrive for myself
But as one fear
Is suppressed
Another rises
And this fear that haunts me now
Is the same that haunted you
And eventually
Led you to leave me
With your endless demons
To struggle throughout
Many seasons cold
Many seasons humid
One too many seasons.
Now
That I have found
Happiness at last,
I’ve also managed to stomp
These demons,
Stomp them deep
And yet,
Not kill.
And so this fear still resides,
Uncertain if someday I too,
Will leave this happiness
To rid of these creatures
At long last,
Forever—
This struggle I fight
With love in my heart,
The same love
You bitterly used
To tear yourself apart
From these demons.
I will not
Commit your errors
However,
I have to believe
Our humanity consists
Of a greater grace within us.
copyright 2004
Francisco
Dominguez |
