by Anika Ajgaonkar
She writes in pitch black shadows, behind closed doors.
Her world is silent; she is choked
By the swaths of darkness muffling the words in her throat.
The lies swarm her, drone into her ears
Poison her with every breath she takes.
Yet, her soul bleeds into her quill
Drips down as ink onto her paper.
In that endless night, she scrawls the letters and words,
Bound by their shared blood, seared indelibly,
Which once weighed down her heart and silenced her.
Unshackled, the strings and chains of her writing lift themselves from the page.
They glimmer with the brilliance of a thousand suns
And illuminate a world enshrouded in deceit.
The murky air clears, and her stifled voice returns
As illusions fade away and hypocrisy crumbles to dust.
Soaring beyond their humble confines,
The words bathe the world with their luminescence,
Roaming windswept valleys, moonlit glaciers, and rugged canyons.
Some look to the skies above, their alphabets drifting in the ever-flowing rivers of time,
Waiting to dispel the darkness, should it descend upon the world again.