This is my life. I have to be okay with the dark presence that looms over me, and I have to accept that I won’t be able to expel him for I must make friends with him to get my way. I have taught my self to just breathe every time I hear his loud footsteps coming up the stairs and not to duck underneath my covers or shout my mother's name. I learned to keep my distance, and In the darkest hour of the night even when he creeps through these halls, I must keep my composure and swallow my pills until the shaking has gone away. He goes by the name Dad, but he’s treated me unlike so, and now I don’t look him in the eye or laugh any longer than I should because one day I’m scared of what’ll happen if I do. I’m afraid of the day when I will lose to the darkness that creeps inside rooms once light and beautiful and changes the presence for good. Rooms once light now dark and dreary.

There's a bitter root
and a world of a thousand terraces.
Not even the smallest hand
shatters the gate of waters.

Where are you going, where, where?
There's a sky of a thousand windows
- a battle of bruised bees -
and there's a bitter root.

Bitter.

Sore on the sole of the foot,
on the inside of the face,
and sore in the cool trunk
of the freshly cut night.

Love, my enemy,
bite on your bitter root!