The shadows of trauma arose in the hollow night,
When the world turned gloomy, devoid of light.
There crept a cloud, cold and vast,
A spectre summoned from the past.
Faint whispers drifted in the wind’s soft cry,
Of days gone by, where hope would die,
Where edicts of a cruel fate
Chained hearts and minds in endless woe.
The quiet hours brought it near,
A weight that fed on silent fear.
Its claws of sorrow raked the soul,
Leaving wounds that never would be whole.
The shadows of trauma, long forgotten, or so it seemed,
In the days when innocence once gleamed,
But buried deep beneath the skin,
The trauma stirred, awake within.
The faces lost, the voices gone,
But still, the trauma lingered on,
A spectre bound to grief’s dark well,
Where once there stood a fragile shell.
It feasted on the hidden grief,
In every sob, in every sigh.
Teardrops of sorrow, silent thieves,
Granted pain that would not die.
The shadows of trauma, through haunted dreams, sought their prey,
In every sigh, in each dismay.
The fleeting peace was ripped away,
As shadows lengthened, twisting astray.
Now trapped beneath a heavy pall,
With no escape, no hope to call,
The past arose with forgotten names,
And life would never be the same.
In silence, it never swayed,
The trauma cast in shades of fray,
A haunting force that never fled,
Until darkness lived where the light had bled.
The shadows of trauma yelled to the wind,
Like a horrible storm of fires and ice.
Memories carved deep, where silence had sinned,
Relics of anguish, a perilous price.
Through the darkness, a shadow lingered,
A yearning for solace, for new dawn’s heightened.
Chaos and despair, a fragile thread,
While wishes had lingered softly where shadows once dwelled.
Fragility wilted in the chasms of despair,
A haunting echo of a soul laid bare.
Esther Elizabeth Racah