The war

In the quiet of her bedroom
while the four small children sleep
She navigates the shadows
of the secrets she must keep.

At thirty-five the surface
shows a mother standing tall,
But underneath the fabric
there are ghosts against the wall.

The world is full of triggers
every slivered edge that gleams
Reawakens all the trauma
and the echo of the screams.

She craves the scent of wet pennies
The metallic, heavy tang,
The only song of agency
her spirit ever sang

When the world was cruel and lawless
and the hands were never kind
She found a way to tether
all the madness in her mind

From the mother who was silent
while the boyfriends left their mark
To the brother in the hallway
adding layers to the dark

Then the father fresh from prison
with the cancer in his bones,
Looking for his "badness"
in her marrow and her tones.

He searched her for a monster
For a flicker of his sin
Never seeing that the beast
was kept buried beneath her very skin

She fights it every morning
she restrains it every night,
But the monster’s getting stronger
and it’s hungry for the light.

She’s tired of the hiding
and she’s sickened by the shame,
Of the red lines on her forearms
that she uses to stay tame

She’s a pillar for her children
but she’s standing all alone
With a mother still among the living
heart of heavy stone.

She must grieve her like a funeral
though her pulse is beating yet
The architect of every pain
she never can forget.

But then the dust settles
and the tether snaps in two
The news arrives like thunder
turning gray skies into blue.

Her mother and her brother
both the root of all her grief
Have fallen to the silence
bringing a terrifying relief

The bloodline of the trauma
has been severed at the core
And the monster in the basement
doesn't hammer on the door.

The smell of copper fades away
the shards of glass lose their sting
She hears the quiet music
that a brand new day can bring

The debts are paid in full today
the cycle’s finally dead
She no longer struggles silently
with the memories inside her head

She’s battled every demon
and she’s finally won the fight
The darkness that once held her
has surrendered to the light

The voices of the tormentors
have fallen hushed and deep
With her mother and her brother
those secrets went to sleep.

The air is clean and quiet
the poison drained away
The monster that lived in her heart
had nothing left to say

No longer does she crave the sting
to feel like she’s alive
She doesn’t need the scars to prove
that she could just survive

The hunger for the damage
and the red-stained ritual ends
Now that those who broke her spirit are no longer her means to an end

She is whole within the silence,
she is steady, she is free
Becoming who she always was
and who she’s meant to be.

The ghosts are in the graveyard
and her flesh is whole once more
She doesn’t need to bleed to know
she has won the war