Daphne’s Silent War

“It’s the quiet way the rain hits”

She thinks and blinks

“How it unloads a bladed arsenal

And raddles velvet valley dreams

From cerebellum’s Oz

Into oracular scrubland.”

And the punished lilt

In Daphne’s duct taped words

Howl through broken wishbone trees

Her raided bell tower tongue

Extinct to subterranean ear.

How deaf sadness follows.

She vows

Her gumption will weave a path

Where trauma’s scissored murderer

Can never snip

Her spinning wheel dreams

Knitting salvation

As teasing holographic flutters

Grip stroke dazed stars

Exploding aneurysm red

In Daphne’s supernova head

And she bolts shocked

To a bedside’s upright defeat

The eyeballing clock

More pained companionship.

Bedside chapel.

4am.

She calls.

Trill in her mothball throat

As trembling words creep out on eggshell platters;

“The demon of silence is gone.

I can dream myself alive now

For the first time since forever

And the scream of hope

Is such beautiful agony”.