This emulation from Lady Lazurus by Silvia Plath is a tribute to my past self and the struggles where I have faced extreme paranoia and obsession for a whole year.

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I have done it again
One day in a year
I manage it–

A morbid battle cry, my voice
As loud as a scream,
My eyes

Wide orbs of cracked mentality,
My face a beautifully grotesque
canvas of fear.

Peel off the skin
O, my enemy.
Do I terrify?–

The ink-stained fingers, the yellowed teeth, the laboured breaths?
But nevertheless, I will disappear.
One day.

Sweat-coated fingers, the biting silver steel
just come a little closer, baby, my heart will be your meal.

But I am a grinning girl, lips pulled back so wide that my skin tears.
I am only sixteen.
And– And I have forever to die.

Now, the light is too bright.
I can feel the burns.
I only laugh because it is my time to burn.
To burn.

Each masked man, woman, child
Blood-stained fingers, bruising my skin, turning it black and blue.
Dragging, leering, taking me to God-knows-where.

They toss me into the woods
Where the shadows are so high.
O me, o my!
My light is going “good-bye”!

What is this?
Ah! It’s my hands, my arms.
Ooooo… These are my fingers.
Beautiful, beautiful.

I am more than skin and bones.

Stand up, I will.
The air is much too still.

Where is the Moon.
Where is the Sun.
My mouth is whispering prayers like bullets from a Gun.

Nevertheless, I am a girl.
Not even a woman.
I am a battle cry
I am a hope.

It’s easy to give up.
It’s easy to cry.
But what I’ll try not to do is to die.

Swaddled in the night
With the tall, faceless man.

What would you like, sir?
Would you like my eyes? My DEATH? My complete and total surrender?
How about my head on a silver platter?

Death is silence.
And it’s so quiet.

Maybe not, I can hear
My heart.
My Blood.
My fear.

I am your thorn (nestled in your side)
I am an insignificant worm in the sea of dirt we call “Life”.
I’m a tarnished knight in armour, sir.

O, let me burn.
Turn this metal to bubbling iron, to bubbling skin.

Let me be a s h e s.

Herr großmann, Herr Ritter
Beware.
Beware.

Like a phoenix,
I’ll rise out of my fear.

I’m brave.
I’m courageous, I can stand tall.
But even strong people can fall.

So, even to this day, I have to remake myself. Into a person I can call “my own”.