What is darkness?
Will you know it when
you enter into it's territory?
Many talk of darkness,
but they glimpse a minute
fragment of the wraith.
Sadly, many know this wrath.

Darkness is the worm burrowed
in a mind that hurts itself
and everyone else around them.
It gives no damn to anyone's plight.
It lets you imagine empathy,
but you're too confused to understand
those loathsome emotions because
all you do is cry for what you never receive.

Inside, longing warps your core,
but releasing it brings more misery.
Your hate eats at every moment
with a crippling distrust
that grieves for a fuse to validate the harm
you've birthed in your tiny mind.
Greed grows from that malnourished
seed set in fertile soil, but it demands blood.
Yours or theirs it matters not,
as long as the beast feeds off mistrust.

And buried under all the hate,
all you want is acceptance and love.
You know it's the material missing
from the hole in your heart and mind,
but you never see you have it in hand,
until you crush it between your clenched
fist and watch the acrid, black ashes
fall to the ground unceremoniously.

By then you're to bitter to resist
the bile that rises and waits disgorgement.
It burns just like the empty pit it spews
free from every day you raise yourself
out of bed and look yourself in the mirror.
You feed off the hate of others
and nourish its black ichor with yours.
Then you know darkness,
for no light will ever shine
into the reaches of self-contempt.

© Hesher John

#bpd #selfhate #mentalhealth