Dig up your demons and let them rise to the surface,
push them back into your empty soul,
returning and disappearing with the rise and fall
of your breath.
One demon threatens at the back of your throat,
you dare it to surface.
This is a demon you buried a long time ago,
one you'll never be ready to face.
You choke back as it follows the line of your tongue,
but it doesn't dare slow down.
You seal your lips, as if to contain it within the safe confines of your mouth,
but this demon knows you can't hold your breath forever,
and so it waits.
You release an exasperated breath, only an eternity later,
and as the demon reaches the tip of your tongue, you taste it's coolness,
the chill and the frigidness that you'd been trying to escape from,
trying to push away with the heat of breath,
of human flesh,
human substance.
The heat of companionship,
friendship,
lust.
Only now are you reminded what it is to be alone,
in the cold echoes,
the closest thing you have to companionship is from those
who lurk deep inside of you.
But they don't want your companionship,
nor your lust,
nor your love.
They devote themselves to eating at the forgotten shell
of your empty soul.
The entire time of their beings,
in fact,
is spent eating away at you,
with their cold teeth, and their cold tongues,
their cold breath, freezing you from the inside out.
You wish they would just die,
lay dormant inside of you until you feel enough warmth to free them,
enough to be sure they'd melt under your breath.
But they would never be so vulnerable,
as they hold power over each thing you do.
You want to fight, but you don't know how.
How could anyone fight something that rages inside of them?
If not a virus, or a disease, how would anyone make it go away?
To reach your soul, to kill something surrounding it,
you must be willing to push through your own skin as well,
your own flesh,
your own muscle,
your own heart.
By the time you reach inside,
you're in the coldest possible condition a human can be in,
and that is dead.
And so the only logical way to fight something inside of you,
the only real way,
the only way,
is to let it out.