Before I Was the Monster

For the challenge, I have used mad to mean angry, not crazy! This poem gives voice to the part of teenage anger that never really fades, especially when it comes from feeling forgotten, abandoned, or misunderstood.

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They say I was born of tempest and thornbush,

a child split from silence by a howl that cracked the hills open,

and maybe that’s true—because all I remember is the rage,

the sharp-jawed frenzy that tore through me when no one heard the words I wasn’t saying.

I was just a boy once, fire in the heart,

but this ache of immortality, of memory stretched thin across centuries,

makes even my scars feel like old songs no one plays anymore.

I snarl at the sky because it never changes,

mocking me with sunsets like the one when they left me,

when I howled for a mother who didn’t come and a father who forgot my name.

There’s no rebellion left that hasn’t been burned to ash in my throat,

no fury that hasn’t grown fangs and turned on me in the mirror,

but I keep roaring,

because it’s the only voice I have that doesn’t lie.

Look at that village—soft, golden, forgetful—

like it never knew the boy who once wept in its fields,

before he became the thing they feared in stories,

before he learned that being mad was safer than being broken.