I stood beneath the weight of shadows,
in a land where whispers thundered,
where love turned to echoes,
and my heart beat like a galley prisoner.

Oh, tormentor! Your grip on my soul tightened,
your mocking — a dagger masked in charm,
your grimacing smile stabbed me.
You wrapped taunts in silk and guise.

See how you dined on my dreams,
sipped from my chalice of hope,
as I feasted on despair—

I wore my innocence like bangles on my wrists, but you gnawed them apart with illusions of safety.

My spirit shattered like a diamond crushed.

Their land, their rules.
Your parents to the left. Your brother to the right. Nowhere to breathe.

My thoughts spiraled like emblazoned embers, scattered by the gale.
Doom hammered down in that obsidian world.

Every heartbeat echoed doom,
as anguish saturated my bones,
corroding aspirations with each thud —
a metronome counting down to detonation.

My soft brown eyes and captivating smile hid the fuse, wired by her roasting my appearance, my decisions, my dreams —
and your love, bent to her demands, broke me.

How could something meant to be sweet feel so cruel?

I held onto hope as darkness crushed me,
disregard became my identity —
it danced through halls of our hopeful pasts,
a specter mocking joy we can never grasp.

The mornings ached with your mother-bound focus, each word you spoke a bitter reminder —that I was nothing more to you than a toy for desire.

Did you seek my mind?
Did you long to know my heart?
Did you want my character?

No!

When that fuse lit and the payload exploded,
I challenged your delusional uprightness.

I screamed in the exile — God knows I tried
my voice silenced by the cavern where your dreams thrived, as if I should take joy in suppression.

So hear me now, tormentor:

I have risen, forged from these shattered hopes.
I am who I was born to be.
I am free!

I have risen, forged in the fire,
Shattered hopes made me climb higher.
No more puppet, no more pawn,
I am the storm — I carry on.
I am free.
I am free.