The pain inside this poem is so deep. :/

From the opening, the moment you mention the blades, it instantly took me back, got me thinking of how sometimes through the loneliness, they can become your only friend. I like how you worded your reason as being " to reach inner layers of yourself" this is quite a unique take on self harm, and it implies that you are not happy with the person you are, mainly on the outside, and perhaps you feel like you have lost yourself and want to find yourself again, find a person you once remember being, or a person you want to be. Trying to shield them gives the impression that they are vulnerable, perhaps they got hurt once before, and you kept them locked inside so that they were safer there, even though it meant they did not get to become a part of you.

The ghosts in your second stanza really portray some sort of pain from your past, something that is haunting you, and you feel you have never really escaped from, and I suppose your biggest fear is that you never will escape from it, and it will always be there chasing you. You show this with the saying of you never seem to be able to out run it.

bitter lack of trust in any future promised to me.

- again this shows a really deep pain, that you have been so badly hurt that you no longer believe you will have a good future, or deserve one. That whole stanza shows these deeper layers of yourself that you first mentioned earlier.

Forcing this infection of the spirit to spread
inside of me with every beating pulse,
robbing me of all my safety, and leaving me
exposed - vulnerable - alone.
Fragile. Weak. Faithless.

- I loved how you just let go here, you did not hide behind metaphors or side tracked your point, you finally just spat out the feelings that are inside, the feelings that you feel and what you think of yourself. This is where the pain lies, such a raw pain with a lot of darkness.

The take on the devil was interesting, it again shows how little you value yourself, and how much you think you are a bad person. That you cannot belong to a good world, because you are not worthy of one. You think you are so bad, that you must be from the Devil. What a sad thought, but unfortunately, a thought that too many people feel at stages in their life.

The ending has a real tone of hopelessness, like you have already given up on yourself many years ago, but this time you are giving up on life. You give up on the future because right now you cannot seem to feel alive in the present, and you constantly feel these ghosts dragging you back to the past. It is a vicious cycle where you end up feeling trapped in, and the thought that this will never change, that you will always be like this, is an unbearable and overwhelming thought.

I connected to so much bits of this poem, and there was so many details added in to it, I could have said much more! It is like you just opened a compartment in your mind, and let all the things you bottled up, come out.

Very powerful write.
well done

This is such a painful but yet a very beautiful poem.....
wonderful write

I am proud of you for writing this Jean... so damn proud of you! Its powerful... deep and a darkness that needs to be released.. <3

This... is me. And you.
Thank you for writing this.

I love this..

This deserved to win on so many darn levels.... Im so happy, happy tears today <3

Absolutely amazing. The way you captured so much personal pain and yet they can relate to others pain.

You took my feelings right out of me and displayed true perfection with this poem. This is my life now..

When reading a deep, dark poem- The reader has to consider the depth of emotion involved with a poem and then when that concept is grasped, try to figure out how the writer managed to pour all that out and make it creative and flow enough to read... Kakera mastered the art of dark poetry this week... I was blown away.

Darkness is beauty. When you take the soul wrenching evil that plagues you and post it to the world for others to read you are opening yourself up in such a naked way that its really difficult to master the technical aspect of writing.. I am just in awe of how Kakera managed this, and so flawlessly I might add. Truly a highlight this week!