The Quiet Rot of Christmas Past | The Rot That I’m Carrying

A reality shock for the comfortable and the blessed.

In a world that constantly pressures us to forgive, forget, and move on - this is not that story.

Some things do not heal; they simply decay. The rot becomes a part of the weight you carry.

It is like a body that withers with time and illness. Some sicknesses stay; they migrate and affect every other part of you. You never really heal, but you learn to live with it through constant maintenance.

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This isn't just a story about bad Christmas; it is a chronicle of my life and permanent scars left by broken boundaries.

The ghouls are the parasitic forces - be they people, memories, or lingering traumas - that slowly choke the life out of a breathing being.

This is me taking the very things that are killing me - my trapped reality, my environments, and my silence - and turning them into a visceral, jagged form of art.

This has probably become my signature: art with sharp edges, because that is the reality I inhabit. I cannot dress these truths up to be pretty or palatable for general public consumption.

I don't write to find an ending; I write to find clarity.

Reality invents me, but through this art, I finally find a way to speak back.

Photo by Kuba Cybulski on Unsplash

The stupor lifts like a heavy fog
A stuffy nose and a salty tear-stained face
The hoarse ache in my throat is a ghost now
An unheard whisper in a hollow space

I look around at the wreckage in the hall
In a house that lost its soul
Velvet needles and splintered pine wood
The hammer's weight is the only thing real

The only thing left for me to hold

A lone bauble rolls to the corner of the room
A tiny glass world in the gathering gloom
The tinsel is tangled, the lights are all dead
And the ghouls are still here, screaming inside of my head

It's a Christmas nightmare, the vibe's been rewritten
By the heelless ghouls and the hearts of the rotten
Taking dominion over everything mine
They trampled my life
They crossed every line
Slamming through my life
Crushing the marrow of it all
Until there's no walls left

They made me a prisoner in my own skin
Trying to run but there's no way out or in
Hiding in the place I used to call home
But a home is just a cage when you're never alone

Lights off, breath held, pulse like a drum
Barricaded in this hell hole until I went numb

Confusion turned to a cold, hard rage
And I tore down the tree
I tore down their stage

Everything I did, everything I grew
Became a hook for them to latch onto

Like a leech that sucks until it's satisfied
Like bad feng shui where the ghouls come to hide

So I hurled my joy in the dumpster out back
I'd rather have nothing than let them latch onto that

Will I ever enjoy the bells again?
Or how I've been naively waiting for the haunting to end?
But the ghouls are never gone
They just shift their weight

They're always around, breathing down my neck
And the misery is louder than the Christmas rains

Just a lone bauble
In the corner
Of a room that used to be home

©Britt H.

Thank you for reading this.

More about the person behind the writing in My Introductory Post