THE CALM

By Alexis Brooks

“Calm down” hits hard in the gut.

 Throat momentarily coated in bitter vomit,

In futile hope she fought the flashback.

Calm down, a relentless ringing,

 A cacophonous orchestra of critique

“Calm down…Calm down pet…If you would just remain calm,

Calm down love…

 I think it would be better for everyone if you just calmed down.”

 It would not be better if she calmed down.

Calming down would open the bolted basement,

And all the world would see her rotten badness.

If she were caught off guard…in that moment of serenity,

She would be staking a claim in this calm to being inhuman,

A non-woman, hiding a fetid fantasy, of putrefying depravity.

Highly strung heightened sensitivities silence sordid shame.

In the very next breath, she is back there.

Terrified and writhing pierced in pain,

The undulating ever increasing waves of pain.

Pleading, begging, guttural expressing,

How much she does not want to do this.

Screaming into the silence of her solitude

 Met with deafening platitudes, hollow praise.

This scene always plays the same.

She is pushing and this agony that consumes her from within will end.

And in that minute of still and silence, her life flashes before her eyes.

Not her life to date, a future, an alternative life.

A path she will never tread,

And………it………is………. MAGNIFICENT.

In that minute,

The minute where the clock ticked cautiously,

In the longest minute that anticipated mourning,

In that minute, she was calm.

Because in that minute, she was free.

#darkpoetsclub