Our worst enemy is ourselves

For after the voices of hate

Which follow us from birth

Are silent in the night

The echoes of their beliefs

Still resonate in our ears.

One could argue then

That memories are the foe

But that is not so,

For it is that fact that we’ve digested

And have accepted the suggested

Falling prey to the suppositions

And to the dispositions

Of those that mocked and teased.

But it is only when we’ve labeled

Those laboured breaths as true

That they can truly haunt us.

Though true it is that they still hurt,

To know some feel such ways

Especially those close enough

To claim to know and understand you,

You are not your flaws

Not your spotted complexion

Nor your fragile, broken composition.

Made of from which worlds bloom

Even broken and dying you give life

Are empowered to touch and change

Capable of creating for yourself

A world worth living in.

Hollowness devours me

Silence eating words before breaths

Can even be drawn, like drafts and

Mere sketches of sentences

Traced in air no longer viable.

The pain is not excruciating, but empty

Like destitute dwellings underneath my

Skin craving for inhabitants gentle

Or wicked without shame.

Yet even these cannot fill and I am

Suffocating on the lack of devastation

Noticeable, categorised and almost

Neat.