Storybook Forest

originally called guilt

Pink foggy swamp

STORYBOOK FOREST

I was brilliant
I was witty
Then something, something
Happened to me.

It could’ve been a brain dysfunction 
It could’ve been too many drugs
It could’ve been my soul leaving my body,
Crying too hard and
Opening, opening, a  channel to all the pain in the world,

At my feet
It ate me alive. 
Isolating everyone I loved
Placing them in a cold dark tomb
Where they couldn’t respond
To my overtures.

I wanted
My pleading and begging to be heard,
To be heard, just once in all the chaos 
Burning bright.

A beacon coming from a super nova
Exploding with no time to think
Light years away
Near a lagoon
That held the remnants of my broken angry heart,

Ignored for too long, too long,
In the savage incubator of a stellar jungle,
The dimensional shift
Sharpened my ray gun eyes
Honing my eyes, piercing like needles
Into the fantastic dreams
Of someone who wanted to be good.

Gentle and sensitive
Tickling the soft underbellies
Of crickets and monkeys
In a storybook forest.
©2025 Stephanie M. Vargo