I am the portrait that chills in the night.
I am the heart that betrays your weakness.
I am the face from which men flee on sight.
I am the step that falls—sightless, speechless.
Your human duality is my breath,
my sharp sense of soul your arrogant mind,
the quest for your truth the quest for my death,
an error too big to just leave behind.
You blame and condemn me my existence
when your human soul is really to blame;
I’m but the creature of your insistence—
you see, you and I are really the same.
O! suffer me to go my own dark way,*
True Creature of Night; I, your protégé.
-Kaitlyn Medina [6/14/08]
*from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The full quote runs thus: “You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and danger that I cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so unmanning.”
