• The Silence

You tell yourself, “it’s nothing,”a presence you choose not to see.

Yet it longs for you, nestled beneath the monotony of your days, etching its trace along the furrows of your mind, and still, you refuse to open your eyes.

Sedated by the comfort you inhabit. You drift into the status quo. In your silence, an endorsement, the fetid breath of what it carries begins to seep.

The monster is patient. It watches you closely.

• The Murmur

Slowly, it draws closer. It fractures your silence into soft murmurs. You find yourself listening.

An agile speaker, it slips into your language, and with a forked tongue, it feeds you fragments of thought.

You mistake its softness for allegiance, and in the quiet distortion of your pride, you begin to take its designs for your own.

As the murmurs multiply, you help sustain its voracious hunger.

• The Cacophony

Its whispers have become screams. They surround you on all sides, as if everything is speaking at once.

In the fever of its voice, your thoughts begin to slip into cacophony. Drawn back into its shadow, you trace the lines it has carved, and under the weight of your own distortion, you give up your autonomy to crown your rage.

Truth and falsehood blur together. You can no longer tell them apart. You stop questioning. In this triumph of ignorance, cruelty can only bloom.

The monster no longer has a form. You have let it become a system. You hear it clearly now. You call it your own.