The Silent Child

There are people who have tried to destroy me for simply expressing my thoughts and emotions.

I held back so many tears, I became an endless ocean.

I filled my little belly with a lifetime of words never uttered.

And when I got too full with them, they’d come tumbling out of me; my little ABC’s of commotion.

I held back screams that I never should have stifled.

I learned as a child to “keep the peace” and never show signs of anger.

Strange how the people around me fought and raged, but any reaction from me could turn them my rival.

So years upon years hollowed me out and sparks simmered at my core like molten lava.

I learned as a child to keep silent, even when I disagreed.

I swallowed a whole forest of thought once and so roots grew where I should have had feet.

I grew into a strange and beautiful thing, yet some hated me even more.

I built caves and housed endless love there; all the love I could never show forth.

One day it came bursting up and started to seep from my tiny invisible pores.

But there was something else that I could not name. It made the satin ebony of night seem more like day.

It was a darkness so strange and frightening. It hid itself away.

I think at times that it must still haunt my veins.

So much silence, only to grow and find with a disappointed face, there would be more who would thoughtlessly do the same.

And I think that I must have missed something while tending to my gardens of pain.

Something THEY never said out loud, but one day, I saw it all the same.

I must’ve surely grown to the height of mountains because they’d look at me ever so strange.

There was a fear; they were hiding from the guilt of all their violence.

And time went by, but my God they still tried, though their effort was in vain.

Tiny little things I’d once feared still shouting at me from way below. It was indeed the strangest thing.

I wonder if they knew I could incinerate them with just a single breath; ever burning inferno of flames.

“LET ME BE!” I shouted! “For I do not fear you any longer.”

“I will not be bound by your fetters and I will take your threats no longer.

I am a storm brewing! A fire! A raging sea!

I am a typhoon! A wind that blows but you can not see.

I am land! I am River! And I am earth cracking open beneath. I have tried for many lifetimes to keep silent but your people do not want peace.

You kept cutting me down and burning my skin with your hate and blackened ash. I have begged you for years, and I am warning you no more.”

“For I AM untamed. I AM free.”