A dark force plays with abandon tearing apart your soul; you cannot admit that

your legacy is blackened and unripe fruit. Treading on it yields neither wine nor juice;

Bottled up, it festers into logic and reason that must needs be denied.

Assumption of superiority helps sooth the waters of turbulent reason while

The bile and fear lap at your toes, calmed only by casting your eyes towards heaven

It is a test you must pass, denying qualms, signs and portents, extinguishing candles lighting the path

Your hair shirt, your denial of the senses; as you cook and then bite into the sadness which you feed

to your child who inherits the fear and the pain wrapped in a bright shell of promise