List of: Effects due to trauma
- The promise of hurt
The impenetrable darkness grows around your heart—an unsteady burden shadowing the pain. The disquieting tragedy of trust is not a careful offering.
- The typical denial of an event
You adjust the glassy light to your memory, faltering as you recall the plots of your past, your testimony the pressure of tumid cries. An unsteady footprint travels across the pavement, reminding you of ruined authentic perfection.
- The diminishment of reality
Melancholia’s stain resonates as you fight to not wind up the doll upon your bookshelf, the one observing time’s elapse. Gently you still wait in haste— empty-eyed.
- The inability to cope
On the other side of life your reflections are not muted and the indelible events passing before your eyes do not make you reside in the past. How can he claim to be close to you, while you remain in diseased loneliness? You gradually forget how to black out fragments of time’s smothering waves.
- The numbing response to life and self-identity
The unreality of what’s about to happen closes your throat with a subtle grip. You are not ignorant of expired promises.
Clara Roberts is a graduate of the MA in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Her poetry and nonfiction have been published in Entropy Magazine, Idle Ink, From Whispers to Roars, Gravel, Heartwood Literary Magazine, among other venues. She lives in Baltimore where she finds material to write about every day.
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