Breathing Rage

This is a purge
that will eradicate,
decimate,
lay clear everything.

Stop touching me!
Stop looking at me!
God, please don’t leave me!
I don’t want you here,
I don’t need you here.
And yet your presence keeps me standing.

The rage scorches,
burning up through the esophagus,
spewing coals that were once your soul.
The wrath takes hold,
takes control,
hooks into flesh and pulls.
Sadness burns deep,
etching,
carving,
riddling you with runes
you will never be able to erase.
And the violence of it grows nails and teeth,
gnashing,
clashing,
tearing apart
seams of all that was good.
All through it,
fire burns.
Burns blue.
Burns green.
Hot,
hot
hot,
hot!
Hotter than anything else.
You revel in it.
Because for once,
for once
you don’t have to throw sand on the coals,
you don’t have to bury them beneath cold and walls.
And for once you just want to burn!
No mask.
No hiding.
The storm ran out of rain.
For once,
you enjoy it.

Gaiety collapses.
And all that’s left of your face
is a snarl that rips itself across your lips so that all traces,
all memory of happiness
is obliterated.
And there is a joy in it,
a giddiness that expands
from toes to finger tips,
up into your head,
lighting your hair on fire.
Then the fire surrounds you in a cloud of smoke
and you inhale,
and despite the fact
that you can’t breathe,
you like it.

The sky sits above,
begging you to let it weep,
begging you to let it embrace you,
begging you to stop the burn.
Yet everything that you walk on
aches for it,
aches for the newness of desolation.
Craves the rawness that comes with the burn,
the scar that glows pink;
a beacon to all around,
that you can be violent.
And you are dangerous.
Because at any moment,
at any one time
you can combust.
Now they know that you have the power
to let it continue to rage.
There is power there.
The power to let go,
to unleash,
let the violence and the soul blend
and come so completely out
that you have no idea how to control it.
And that is power.

There are moments,
moments where the ice creeps into your heart,
spasming,
crawling,
begging you to stop,
because you’re afraid of it.
You’ve held control for so long,
kept yourself bound so tightly
that when the bindings come loose,
when sanity lies in tatters,
the pieces knot around your neck like a hang-man’s noose,
and you have no idea how to get it off.
You’re terrified that those flames will burn
the only foundation keeping you from hanging.

This is the truth of rage.
This is the truth of anger.

Bitterness compliments it,
sets it on a pedestal ,
breathes life into it,
allowing it to expand,
to crawl
and to grow larger.

This is the truth of the purge.