The Way My Nightmares Used to Speak

To the one who took my life from me:

The way my nightmares used to speak

I thought it would be in screams and in shouts.

I expected it to be dark and the sky to be stormy,

ominous music playing in the background,

the stench of death and darkness permeating the air around me.

I thought it would be like some cliché horror movie,

with a house haunted by ghosts and demons,

and a monster to run from, with sharp teeth and a menacing roar.

I didn't expect the sun to be shining

and the light to be bursting through the windows.

I didn't expect for birds to be chirping

and people to be laughing and smiling around me.

The air did not smell like death,

but like flowers and clean laundry.

There were no ghosts, no demons to haunt the house,

only my own memories.

And there was no menacing roar to run from.

But there was fear, the worst kind of fear,

the kind so deep and so perpetual

you don't even notice it until it's over.

The way my nightmares used to speak

was not in screams nor shouts,

but in whispers.

The sort of whispers that are in your ear for so long

that you forget they are not your own thoughts.

Maybe that is what you wanted,

to make me into a shell,

forgetting I could choose,

tearing my freedom from me.

My mind, my body, my world,

violated by your touch.

The way my nightmares used to speak

I thought you could control.

But don’t imagine they answer to you,

not anymore.

You simply made them permanent.

Now I will make them powerful.

Sincerely,

The one whose life you could not keep