3. AZKABAN
DoBH – Weru ’19
November 10th 2023
This one was going to force me to sit with myself.
On that ride to NOWHERE,
With my phone buzzing out of control,
I stared into the darkness of the night and allowed it to engulf me.
It was no longer a realm of fear but a companion to my desolation.
I had drifted far from the haven I once called home,
Surrendering to the embrace of an ugliness that fed upon my soul,
Whispering tales of hopelessness and calling my name.
The night called me by name,
The darkness spelled it out with adjectives of who I had become:
Desperate;
For connection and validation.
Grasping at any semblance of attention,
Settling for less than my morals deemed worthy.
Egocentric;
In the attempt to salvage a sinking ship, it mattered to me how “We” looked;
Nothing less than the gram happy-couple algorithm.
It didn’t matter what our needs and feelings were,
Put that smile on and worship my existence you imperfect man.
Bitter;
Because your imperfection mirrored the ugliness in me.
How dare you unravel the secrets of my pain entwined in all my trauma?
My words spewed with poison suffocating what used to be our sacred place,
Cutting so deep, each conversation felt like a battlefield.
Obsessive;
Obsessively attached to you,
If I couldn’t have you, no one else could.
For a person I didn’t respect,
Why did the thought of your rejection delude me?
Was my self-image that disturbed?
Resentful;
For myself, for you and for who we had become.
For every missed orgasm, for opportunities real and imagined, I blamed you for it all.
You had taken from my past, present, and future – curse the day you were born!
Angry;
I had done it all to myself.
Failed to see the red flags in you and the majority in me.
Allowed my misery as an excuse to go through life without accountability.
With a sense of entitlement that surely made the gods laugh.
Heartless;
That is who I had become.
A walking darkness sucking life without remorse.
A dementor draining happiness and joy in this prison of torture we called Azkaban.
Today had been the culmination of it all.
When I had gazed into your eyes with the darkest of thoughts and smiled.
When I had served you breakfast in bed and wished you’d choke on it.
When I had run you a bath and fantasized on you slipping on it.
Today, clarity had dawn upon me.
I was going insane.
Slowly sinking into oblivion,
I yearned to drag you down with me.
I needed a glimmer of salvation—a Patronus charm,
To fend off the darkness that threatened to consume us both.
I was not going to find it here,
Not within this spiraling abyss.
Deborah Nyamu,
DoBH,
2024.
