Baggage (TW:Trauma)
They send me on my way
Said it was a gift, what's inside that little box.
It's shiny and black, and oh so dark, you'd think you're looking into the depths of the ocean on a moonless night.
It's also heavy, that little box. The straps of my pack are cutting deep into my shoulder.
They didn't tell me where to go with it either.
What I'm supposed to do with it..
I didn't look inside for a long time.
I carried it over mountain ranges, across rivers and through valleys so deep and so dark, I thought the night would be eternal.
My boots fell off so long ago, I don't remember what they looked like.
You can follow me by my trail of bloody footprints on the sharp rocks of this endless hellhole.
I don't mind the pain, I tell myself. I've forgotten the absence of it.
I wonder, what's inside? What did they give me, when I left my home, that dark place with the windows nailed shut, now so silent, as I took my screams with me?
I find the edge of a cliff, overlooking a lake of the same darkness as my bothersome little keepsake.
I decide to open it.
Inside
A white flash
A woman with her baby in her arms
A raised fist of an angry man
A Bed, flipped over, and a child in the arms of a bleeding woman.
A Door opening
A flinch
A shout
A slap
A million tears
A haunting familiarity with terror, which replaced the primal trust in a parents love too early that one could have known what it was supposed to feel like
An act of love, twisted into a ritual of pain and degradation, administered at a time, where love should have only meant caresses and a shoulder to cry on
A white flash
I throw it off me like it's covered in acid. I Gag. I vomit. I scream. I scramble to my feet, tears of remembrance in the eyes of my distorted grimace. They dared!
How did they fucking dare.
THEY DARED TO SEND ME ON MY WAY WITH WHAT I FLED FROM
NO MORE
I scream curses at the sky
It darkens, and answers in a howling wind, with heavy rain, the blackest of clouds and the loudest of thunders.
I take a last look at the remnants of past misery
No more, I repeat, in the quiet voice of a scared child
And my bloody, mangled foot connects, as I kick their curses over the edge of the cliff, watching them fall, dwindle, and finally disappear into the depths of the lake.
Comforting silence in the nothingness of a dreamless sleep
As I wake up, the sky has lightened up again. Why is it blue? I didn't know the sky could have colors.
I sit up, and smell the scent of a flower for the first time. I'm feeling refreshed. My feet are healed.
I might actually enjoy my travels today. It might feel good to be travelling light.