There’s a hate in my heart,
buried deep, under liqueur’s burn
and the chill of colombian snow,
strewn across train tracks,
long and wide,
stretching into nowhere.
My family doesn’t see it—
too busy with their own lies.
The preacher, with his sanctified tongue,
wouldn’t dare touch it,
and my friends?
They only skim the surface,
pretending they know me.
Hate hums like a low engine,
alive but dormant,
its rhythm keeping time with my pulse.
I drown it,
I chain it,
but it always stirs,
a shadow in the corner of my mind,
laughing softly at my attempts
to suffocate it.
It wants to devour,
to rise,
to scream its name across the empty tracks.
But I hold it down,
not because I’m strong,
but because I’m tired.
Hate doesn’t die;
it learns to wait.
It lives in truce with silence,
biding its time,
until the snow melts,
the tracks rust,
and it no longer needs
my permission.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
October 2024
The Quiet Engine