Rage and serenity

I. Longing  Oh, how you ache for gentle hands and familiar faces, yearning for a life stolen away. You don’t deserve it. You’ll never scrub the blood from your hands.  There is no one coming to save you.  II. Rusted Not the gleaming metal of your arm-  they would never allow that. You’re decaying on the inside, your mind a wasteland of rusted parts that don’t turn the way they are supposed to. Who are you? Who were you? Machine or human being? You don’t know the difference. III. Seventeen Something inside of you fills with anguish as you look at the pale face of the boy you just killed. Following orders. He’s tiny, all bloodstained blonde hair and empty blue eyes. Something in your mind screams because he looks like someone you think you knew. They beat you for it. You know no one. You are a tool. You try to remember why he was familiar, but there is nothing. Only the bitter cold.  IV. Daybreak When was the last time you saw the sun? You don’t remember. Even when you’re outside, your skin is covered in black cloth and smeared blood. No amount of light can warm the frost from your bones. The sun will never grace you with her heat again. You are a creature of winter.  V. Furnace Explosions in trenches and the screams of men you no longer remember ring in your ears. You can see those haunting blue eyes surrounded by flame, screaming for you to leave. Not without him. You’d rather die.  You are in hell.  VI. Nine Not the kind of hell that is all fire and brimstone. That’s reserved for the lustful and envious. You are in the ninth circle, encased to your waist in ice. You read in school about the ninth circle being the prison of Lucifer. You shiver with cold and realize you’re the devil. You’ve become him. VII. Benign There is still a part of you inside, locked away where they will never find him that is kind. He weeps at what you’ve become, trapped in his own mind, screaming to break free. When he manages to escape, they lock him back away with bloody fists and blue shocks of electricity.  He learns to stay huddled away where they can’t hurt him. Silent. Broken.  VIII. Homecoming Home is chaos and death and destruction- frost in your hair and a chill that never leaves. It used to be a boy. The one with the wide blue eyes that stay burned in your splintered memory no matter how much they beat you. He’s gone now. You’re never going home.  IX. One The lowest cardinal number. Half of two. Half of a whole. Lonely, desolate, broken, hurt. You are alone. Truly and utterly alone. X. Freight Car Where it all began. A glimpse of those terrified blue eyes- the brush of a gloved hand- and then you’re falling next to white snowflakes as you hurtle toward the earth. It’s peaceful, still. And then, you become one with the cold, your blood staining the pure white all around you.  They drag you away, but that’s not what made you. It was the fall. You’ve become the bitter chill of winter.