I was inspired to write this after a difficult email exchange I had with my sister almost a year ago now. I realized that her pain could not forgive, her memories were still ever-present, and her only way to share her pain was to inflict harm through her words. I swallowed her poison, though I wish I hadn’t, and I am now using my poetry to pull it out of my body, to heal and move on. Though I say, “he,” in this poem it is not for a man, but for mankind.

Words are like kingdoms

Fought over with little reason

No land to call his own

Just words laid out like stones

Carrying him over bridges

Throwing them with little precision

Never-lasting.

An insatiable appetite to show he’s the man

He raises words like swords, puts them deep in

Your heart stops.

Killing over and over, you don’t even have to be there

Your poison was drunk and my mind keeps it stuck

How did my kingdom fall?

No drop of blood, no special gathering,

No deceit, no retreat

Take me to another land, far away

Where your words have not touched like leaves

falling on me.

Where your breath has not been the wind

knocking me over.

And where the fog of your pain, is not in my within,

It lifts

As my kingdom rises again.