The drummers drum and the writers scroll,
We avert our gaze, yet risk our soul…
Humanity owns the rising toll…
Our leaders lament, as poets search for the words that fit…
A silent crime, but no one murmurs, for truth is split…
Yet buried in the far corners of hidden shame,
It is the fragile self that endures the blame…
“Hey Daddy, will you love me if I’m good?
I need you to care, I need to be understood…
Whatever you share, wherever you go,
You tell me I’m special, but that no one else must know…”
You took my childhood: buried it is, with secrets and fear…
It rots amidst the ashes, yet parts remain so clear…
From me to you, from here to there…
I am an eternal captive, fused, but ever aware…
We do not need to hear them beat their drum,
I hear their whispers and will warn you if they come…
You’ve done it forever, and then somehow…
You owned me then and you own me now…
I lay awake, counting the hours into the night,
Listening to the clock, and knowing you might…
Fearing the darkness and wishing for the light…
We love you and we hate you and we bear your right…
“Where, of where, is your concern, where is your voice?
Mother, you know the truth and you made your choice…”
You wanted me dead; I wanted me dead…
I can hear the same old voices in my aching head…
You are telling me that I am to blame,
The sole source of habitual shame…
Yet why does part of me miss you so?
I did not come from anywhere and there is no place for me to go…
A child looked to the sky and wished to fly with the birds…
It started really, before I could properly find the words…
I beat and burnt and cut my battered skin,
As if such injuries would release the pain or atone for sin…
The drummers drum and the writers scroll,
We hold our gaze, yet risk our soul…
Humanity owns the rising toll…
Yet, somewhere in the endless nights and bruising days,
I clung to something real, to find perhaps some other ways…
The voices within told me not to trust…
And we knew that soon, we’d just be dust…
Deserving nothing and just blown away,
The end of that trail that stretched from yesterday…
Give it a go perhaps, if you must…
But a thousand reasons not to trust…
He’ll be just like the others, can’t you tell?
Grooming you to build another chapter of hell.
Slowly we move towards the ledge…
We are watchful, wakeful, always on edge.
Perhaps he glimpses what we endure?
We need to test him; we need to be sure…
Why he’d stay, we cannot conceive,
If he knows what we are, he will surely leave…
Can he bear to see the burden we carry within?
Where will it end? How to begin?
Where will it end? How to begin?