Resilience Unnerving

Once written as a personal parting-of-ways to an old friend.

I will keep myself tucked safely away

from demons that don human skin

and lap up corrosive venom

with barbed silver tongues,

long and forever tarnished,

whose gaze would so often fall upon my bones

as the weight of a thousand towering mountains,

threatening to crush my soul as thoughts

ice cold set target upon the warmth of my all,

as that of darkness wicking

a flame’s last breath.