By Bob W Christian

Forty years, an eternity carved into flesh,
Each second a ghost haunting the corners of my mind.
In the mirror, I see the boy who never was,
Eyes hollowed, innocence gutted by your hands.
The old white farmhouse, its paint faded,
A tombstone for a childhood lost.
You, a specter of rot and decay,
The monster I vowed to unearth.
Your voice, a sickening melody,
Tries to weave webs of pity and remorse.
But I am not that broken child,
I am vengeance personified, relentless, unyielding.
Dragging you through the threshold,
The air thick with memories of screams,
Your body, frail and trembling,
The fear in your eyes, a dark, twisted satisfaction.
Each blow, a symphony of bone and blood,
Your flesh a canvas for my rage.
You convulse, a marionette on frayed strings,
Every scream a note in the requiem of your sins.
In the barn, tools of torment rusted by time,
I find new purpose, each blade a deliverance.
I carve your guilt into your skin,
Every cut a ledger of pain unpaid.
You beg, a pitiful creature,
Words slurred through shattered teeth.
But mercy died with my innocence,
And I am the hollow echo of your cruelty.
Dragging you to the garden,
The earth cold, unfeeling, like my heart.
The shovel, heavy with intent,
Tears into the ground, a grave yawning open.
Your pleas, desperate, animalistic,
Fall on ears deafened by torment.
I bury you alive, the soil swallowing your terror,
Your hands clawing at the earth, a futile grasp at salvation.
In the silence, I hear your muffled screams,
A symphony of suffering, eternal.
The flowers above, nourished by your decay,
Bloom in grotesque irony, beauty born from horror.
The farmhouse stands, a monument to retribution,
Its silence a testament to justice served.
Forty years of shadows dispelled by your cries,
Now buried in the garden, your purgatory, my peace.