You Promised: A Poem

I was promised I’d grow out of it,
or grow into it.
I traded the Teenage Dream™️
for lonely walks in the misty woods.
Just me and the holy
and unholy
ghosts.

Day in and day out
I cried and beat my breast.
The woods hooked my heart
and asked me to come with them.
They pierced the most tender part
of my soul with their scratchy, icy
limbs.

You promised.
You promised!

But I had already laid
one of my feet in cement when
my parents remodeled the deck.

It was stiff.
It was human.
I wasn’t going anywhere.

I begged the woods to amputate it,
cauterize it.
I’d do it myself if I didn’t
think I’d bleed out before I was done.

The holy and unholy ghosts
listened while I retched tears.
“I gave you my childhood
and you’ve given me nothing!
Blind me to everything but you,
like you promised!”

And they did.
They took my eyes
so all I could see
was the woods.

But my foot
is still petrified
in backyard concrete.

A/N: Hey guys! Still working on Inktober, though it’s been a little slow-going this week. I’ll have a final recap next week and a look forward into next month’s NaNoWriMo.

In the meantime, have this little poem I wrote when I was feeling frustrated. This is one of those poems that I wonder if anyone can relate to, or if it’s too personal. But that’s the beauty of poetry, isn’t it? If you write truth from your deepest places, you find that other people feel much the same way, even if the details are different.