It seems I don't have a voice; I only have a say for the words I lay on paper, what can I do to get through to you and the deceit clogging memory?

I DEMAND RESPECT…but perhaps the implication was too subtle. My inner-self screams for the suffering and utter consideration to win the day and escape drowning in its shame and dismay. Why linger when there is always a finger pointing at me?

Growing since youth, more as blood brothers than friends; growing yet crumbling as time ticks by. Time passing and carrying with him pieces of our bond, once naïvely unified. 'More blood than brothers flows through my mind,' as if carried by a chillingly smooth breeze.

Days and months came and went, reunification and total separation. Seemingly ending with smug smiles and thorns in the voice as my uniquely mundane punishment; piercing my heart and crawling back so I can once more glue the pieces.

Walking through that darkened forest that somehow appeared time and time again; enticing me to journey deeper into its depths. Constantly, every which way claims to be the way out; the signs bearing its direction claims faith—transcribing into doubt. Journeying ever downward until the right path sparkles through the inky darkness.

Like a king, he paws into the spotlight where his mane and arrogant attitude roars meeker than the victimization he claims that has hurt his mighty ego. Tis' only a thorn in the paw of the false predator preying on the wanderer—once a fellow nomad, now assembled into a civil pilgrim seeking redemption and peace. His haughtiness throwing any compliance away, he stands atop pride rock; making it seem his 'inferiors' kneel before him.

He who materializes after the fraudulent leopard whose spots draw your attention like the elusive strikes from every which way. The damage was done, clouded from the fearful souls accompanying the mighty hunters shreds wider and wider. Cowardly, he hides in the shadows and blends with the fears of receiving another bite from another direction—either hunting in shady coolness under toxic roars or proves treacherous out in the open and makes aware his presence; still disguised as a harmless display of strength.

There he unknowingly consented the forest to swallow him deeper; weening farther on the path most trodden and more distant. Stretched before him was a gate made with the darkest obsidian; above labeled the phrase trespass. Run, run, he seemed to hear as the doors creaked open and saw him through the tunnel hungrily looking for every scar—preserving the last of his doused dignity.

The walls echoed a voice so grieved and starved—blaring into his skull he ran, and ran, and ran until he found himself into a field lit dimly from yellow to orange; trying to possess entirely the vast space. Finally, there sat the wolf of incontinent herself. Weaving in and out of the dimming light, the pest-ridden jackal ravaging through the wasteland of pungent decayed souls of those with their throats ripped to shreds. Pouncing on the opportunity to mortify and shame the remaining source of life into cowering in the night.

Trauma from the attackers has taken all but a sliver of hope where he spotted the sparkling light onto the right path. Scampering, he made his way towards redemption and looked at the towering mountain where purging is called for. To ascend he must descend farther into the chaos--until then all that remains is a shard of his memory.