Festering Wounds and Petty Trifles
When your life doesn't look tragic enough for them.

Photo by Marta Rastovac on Unsplash
You studied the manual of how people expect you to act - calculating every gesture and syllable, learning to detect the temperature of the room without a thermometer.
You executed it so perfectly that they saw a gilded creature rather than a person struggling.
When you dared to confide your wound, you were met with cold dismissal; they made you feel that your sadness was a debt or something you had stolen rather than your own valid emotion.
They branded your festering wound petty trifles, and crowned you the whiner.
i wore the armor of a brave front
against the sting and shadow of shame
incompetence was the ghost i confront
so i mastered every role of the game
grew the thick skin my livelihood demand
where vulnerability is seen as a flaw
i hid my humanity behind illustration wands
and lived by the cold and unwritten law
there was a gnawing deep inside
a faceless name i couldn't shun
i fled the world and the pain outside
only to find a black hole swallowing the sun
draining my light and hacking my identity
a silent ruin beneath the pride i shown
no laments should come from this entity
with a debt of feelings i've no right to own

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©Britt H.
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