RIDER

Flashes of the red death of sunset
crunched into my mind and the summer heat
was like the devil’s breath on my shoulders bare.
Nearly all of me was bare.
I was as white as a blank page erased of all
that once made me feel safe.
Now, emptiness was all that was there.

I could scarcely recall who I was after that.
After the searing pain, the aching in my limbs and head.
In the dirt, tears, and blood is where I sat
blinking and wondering if I were dead.
Is this heaven? Hell?
The phantom rider left my side and crept within instead.
In that dwindling twilight, fear was all I could see
hiding and twisting everything in front of me.

One is never so completely alone than when one is in the twilight of sanity
feeling all that is right turn ever so wrong and ebb away,
needing to cry out but one cannot –
Honestly, what is there to say?
“I’ll be all right!” But will I? Yes, you must believe it.
Letting Death ride in your mind upon his pounding black horse
is even more terrifying than the actual ending that succeeds it.

I wanted to die that night encased in crisp white innocent cotton.
A hospital bed, a nurse’s hourly check
was no safety against what he had seen.
I felt blackness polluting the sheets.
My pain a living testament to surviving the trod
of Death over my trembling soul. Yes! A defeat!

But will he return?
the fingers of fear – tap, tap, tap
travel down my spine relentlessly.
My troubled mind beginning to burn
knowing it would be a fight
to outrun the rider circling in my mind each night.

With my eyes I fervently pray
that you will never see the jagged edges of my deepest wounds.
I smile, but, inside I know.
Soon.
I will look over my shoulder and there he will be
the rider pushing me onward.
I keep two steps barely ahead
the violence of his whip wishing me dead.
He cannot have me, not then, not now.
I will always outrun him – this I angrily vow.

From that day to this, would you ever believe
I have lived in the midst of the crumbling façade of me?
A small price to pay for the freedom of life
a bargain with Death to live, but only with strife.
So onward I go, running toward you
I’ll be on my way again, alone in the sight
of what changed my whole world in the garishness
of that dark, violent night.