I have a little secret.
I keep it inside of me
Locked away in a box of flesh and sinew underneath my rib cage.
Sometimes the box rattles like a sack of dusty dry old bones.
Sometimes it is still and silent.
But I know the secret is still in there
Creeping around on the soft paws of a cat’s shadow
Thin, dark, and brooding it stalks me from inside that box
Sometimes it whispers to me
A sound like rage and pain and silence all caught up by the wind
A wind that rushes and stirs and dies behind my eardrums
Between the hammer and the anvil
In the spaces that exist just outside one’s reach but not one’s understanding
It hunts me there
From inside its container
In the dim murky moonlight of my mind I watch it stir and oscillate the flesh-made box
Sometimes when it begins to grumble and groan I have to ready myself
For a fight may start if it ever breaks loose
Then, in those times, I hold my steel firm in my hand
And on occasion, I am given cause to cut at it with my blade
Biting deep at the box edges with sharpened metal
In the most deliberate of cuts.
The box bleeds and oozes pain in thick globs of tactile anguish
And in those moments, bitter and cold
The secret quiets and lies down on its haunches
For it knows what I have done
And all it required was blood…
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