overnight in the life --- 20 september 1999
nikholas “katana” f. toledo


this is my birthday poem, can you tell?  sure, it was way in advance, as
in more than a week, but still.


there were no stars in the sky last night,
just a million falling twinkling teardrops,
hot and cold mixing on my pillow.
it hurt crying myself to sleep again,
after so long a silence of strangled darkness.
i thought i was strong and could handle it,
the pain of getting caught between scylla and charybdis.
or is that the right metaphor?
a blood clash in the family might well be too much to take
especially for someone who’s been hurt by friends every single day of
her life.
i’ve gone through those wars and come out bloody and unbowed,
and yet a single incident at home brings down my defenses and forces me
to my knees.
some fortress i built, that two men from opposing kin-ties could destroy
it with simple words.
what does that say of my life so far,
sixteen seasons of silent solitude?


but after the rain, pinks and purples.
last night’s anguish vanished under this morning’s hope.
pandora was right not to have shut the lid on that blasted cursed box,
or else the suicide stats would’ve skyrocketed.
it’s true, hope springs eternal,
renewed with every sunrise and every remembrance of love.
cliched, but love is a wonderful thing,
light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t another train.
i’ll be seventeen soon, another year finished,
another three hundred and sixty five heartaches buried six feet under
and good riddance.
put the past behind me for good,
shake the pain’s dust off my journeying feet.
take the lessons along and toss the rest overboard,
come into my own and step out of the shadows.
find myself and a place in the sun,
hope in my heart and love in my soul.