Villanelle – Hold Your Tongue – Forever Distracted By Life

Have I gone blind; or just lost sight
of an unplanned destination?
Having held my tongue I feel contrite.

I am the darkest part of night;
I have fed on hesitation.
Have I gone blind or just lost sight?

Spitting words like venom when I fight,
I don’t speak of devastation.
Having held my tongue I feel contrite.

My bark is much worse than my bite;
my own tail I am chasing,
have I gone blind; or just lost sight?

My throat constricts, my chest is tight,
I can’t stop my heart from racing;
having held my tongue I feel contrite.

I shy away from lasting light
against a broken heart, I’m bracing.
Have I gone blind; or just lost sight?
Having held my tongue, I feel contrite.

2021©DSCoremans

Author’s Note:

This poem was used as inspiration for today’s Poetry Prompt. I wrote it in July 2020 at the end of my third month in lockdown. It had been a long, and emotionally difficult summer, and my family and I were preparing not just for returning to uni, but the preparation for the long months ahead, still in isolation and still without external support. My father had undergone his second round of major surgery for the treatment of Colon Cancer and had yet to start what would become a six month course of chemotherapy. Contemplating the future felt like looking within fog so dense that the harder you looked, the more lost you became. To have made it through to this point, where Dad’s treatment has ended and the next phase of his recovery has begun and that we have maintained and achieved around this is an incredible feat, things remain hard for us, as they do for many, but in another six month I wonder how much further forward we will be.

This poem speaks to me of my own emotional hurt at this time, how lost I felt and how scared I was for the future. I still feel all of those things now, but am stronger already for having gotten to where I am.

DSC 13/02/2021