Monsters – World Poetry Day 2019

I do not recognise myself standing in the many shadows of you.
You, towering, all-consuming, ever present but hidden away,
in plain sight.
Yet I feel you in every part of me. Trying to become me.

Not all monsters lurk like you.
Once awakened, you thrive, clamour, steal, reverberate …through the length and breath of my mortal body,
Silently leaving deadly, indelible traces of your mark, like on a cracked egg, ready to fall apart,
any, anytime now, but still holding itself together as the lines spread and spread,
Until I am finally broken.

Your crack lines emerge in places impossible.
From earthen shell to the soul and heartland of me.
Breaking, smashing, pillaging anything and everything, until I am nothing of my former self; nothing of possible Me(s).

But even broken things can be beautiful.
With floods of tears and streams of blood I shall, I shall put me back together again.
I emerge not the ‘Me’ that once was, was to be or had been imagined with dreams for the future.

I rise as someone, something else entirely–Pained but persevering. Flawed but fluid. Broken but beautiful and believing that I shall conquer.
I am and will be the ‘Me’ that never was imagined.
I am the ‘Me’ that’s emerged from the ashes of pain.
I will not fit your cardboard cutouts or your nicely stencilled stereotypes.

And I am not sorry.

To survive, I change. Constantly.
As the monster morphs so will I – imperfect still, but ready to give bloody hell in all battles to come.