Farewell

Once home to me, this house is now forgotten

And silence echoes in the icy walls.

Winds walk unhurriedly on floors long rotten

And old paints cracking sound like anguished calls.

 

The walls are crowded with familiar faces -

The ghosts I never knew before by name

But carried in myself to far off places

Until my mind was sick and body lame.

 

Here's Pride, who had her face hung on the ceiling

Just to make sure she's higher than the rest.

She fed me with illusions till unfeeling

I stared through others' pain as empty jest.

 

Obedience, with tears and blood anointed,

Who followed me, a jailer with a stick,

And marked my back with red when disappointed -

Her portrait fell and sits on crumbling brick.

 

Rigidity stands stiff in eerie doorway,

The bones of cracked old frame supporting walls.

She waits, forever upright, for her pay day

When ceiling lapses and last curtain falls.

 

They scowl and scorn with timeless painted hatred

But I'm the one who in the end stands tall.

Today will see them all obliterated.

Today I come with burning wrecking ball.

 

I once escaped but now return much bolder

To lay to rest decrepit evil hags.

My soul grew young but eyes somehow grew older.

Their stately garments I now see as rags.

 

As beams crash down and bury musty pictures

I watch the blazes seize the shattered hall.

A cloud of dust explodes, the ceiling ruptures

And walls laid bare lament the castle's fall.

 

Flames lick the ruined ribcage of my prison

And purge the earth of shadows and grey stain.

A single tear that blurs the stark, grim vision

Falls down unnoticed in a sudden rain.

 

I turn away from death and desolation

And see a flower by my muddy feet,

Its healthy golden smile a confirmation

That courage, love and sun are all I need.