Cold Is My Confession Poem by Leria Hawkins

I felt the darkness creep cold beneath my breast
Trembling as it consumed me, crushing my light, my spirit
I reeled as echoes breathed beyond our clandestine world
Spilling the secrets of our tainted souls

For hidden in a brume of whispers on my pillowslip
Lay the trove of our sordid desires
Lust, passion, wild fantasies…burning in the flames of our depravity
A jangle of twisted rhyme spewing an unwritten song

I listened to the spin and fury of your persuasion
Withering as an animal, broken and ashamed
I was stripped bare in the squalor of finely-honed mockery
My soul sacrificed for pleasures sought in empty promise

For somewhere in the abyss between the truth and a lie
You hid all that is tender, all that is rightful and sincere
And you made haste to obscure the light from my eyes
In an ongoing strike toward my emotional undoing

For only you, came to me in the guise of magic
And without wings, you lifted me high in flight
And only you warmed me, not by love or beauty or grace
But by the fire of my own blinded desires

And just as the poets pen strikes fury upon the leaf
I bled out in a muddled confusion of truth and fantasy
Winter came and turned the glass on my grand illusions
Leaving me, to stand alone to face a broken reflection

Seems you dallied far too long in the shadows of my soul
Strumming fire from the fragile threads of my heart
But all the while, seeds of doubt thickened beneath my flesh
Growing and ripening to the birth of my enlightenment

Love is too heavy a burden to carry alone, and I am weary
For my dreams have turned to sorrow, and from the ashes
A new emotion is born, one of pain and silent resentment
And I long for freedom from these chains that bind me

The flask is uncorked, spilling forth to drown the fallacy
And flames flicker anew to warm the hollows of my heart
I will not yield to the darkness, nor shall I suffer in cold indifference
My pain burns in defiance, fueled by the rage of self-preservation

And I will to drive out, once and for all, all traces of the illusion
The honey sweetness of your lips, the fiery addiction of your touch
I will cast out the bittersweet remembrance of the many hues that haunt me
Singing breathlessly, alive, wanton, yet oh so weary

But all is not forgotten, as I cling tight to the knife of lessons learned
I endured the searing pain that once and for all dashed the flames
Opening my eyes to the many truths that my heart refused in bitter protest
At last I see the worth of this too long obsession

At last, I’ve seen the light and found the heart…to let it go