The warm glow in the corner of my room

leaves the air umber and undying

as my eyes traverse the popcorn ceiling with peaks of gloom.

 

Uninvited, the light still stays

as if believes it’s presence is rebellion—

as if light wasn’t here first, wasn’t what greeted my breath on my first day.

 

I think it’s confused, a little too hopeful,

and I know that feeling all too well.

It used to be my favorite in its ethereal waves of seaside opal.

 

But that is past tense for a reason,

one I myself am not too sure of,

one I myself find believing could be treason

 

as my eyes freeze on those ceiling peaks, the undying light arresting my thoughts.

 

Rays that reach me beg for my remembrance,

and I pity their useless cries. Still

I refuse, deny, protest against them with vengeance.

 

My back stays straight as if to prove that I refuse to bend to the light’s pleads,

and that is my rebellion

like it has its own to which I’ve become fatigued.

 

I don’t want it’s umber light across my room—across the ceiling

exposing everything I could ignore when

that omniscient presence was not the reason I was still breathing.

 

But I was scared of the darkness then,

falsely tricked into loving what hurt me,

believing that light would save me over and over again.

 

Yet no one told me the beauty of the darkness,

the accepted neglect of what could stay ignored

and be kept hidden like a carcass.

 

For I found myself in the shadows

better than I saw her in the light,

never having to face the unknown.

 

Now that the fearless light is back,

the evil one portrayed so pure for far too long,

I cannot sleep—cannot prevent these cracks

 

as my own hidden carcass is exposed.