No Vacancies

No Vacancies

You cannot crash
through the gates of my soul
and take what suits your fancy.

I am not an open book for you.
You are not welcome to flip through my pages
nor will you gain access to my thoughts.

By the time my spirit recovers from your torment,
my book will be read by millions.
They will also know how it feels to be watched.
And so will you. 

Their eyes will be upon you.
My readers and I, we are now able to see Evil at its birth
and will no longer tolerate its rise to adulthood
nor open our doors in ignorance, and invite It into our homes.

For this, I shall thank you. 

But I will not grant you praise
for giving me the strength I’ve mustered while enduring your terror,
nor for the relief I find each day that fear does not quicken my pulse.

And I will not bless you for the gift
of sparing my life, for you very nearly killed me.

Nearly,
but you did not succeed.

Now that my book is written,
not even you can erase the ink on my pages.
You cannot delete your acts from the minds of the readers.

Do ghosts seek you out when you sleep and when you wake?
Are you afraid to look behind you 
when you hear footsteps trail your path?

I once knew that life, but I am different now. 

I will no longer carry you on my journey. 
My soul is a hostel, with rooms to hold my love and joy
and other rooms left emptied by sorrow and pain.

But if Fear comes knocking again,
there will be no vacancies.

SWPoet

Font-Originally done on Microsoft using Matura MT Script Capitals which has an Arabic
appearance and truly adds to the cohesiveness of the poem.  No similar fonts were
available on wdc (if you know of a way to do this, please let me know).



Dedication:

This poem is dedicated to the survivors of war and dictators' regimes, domestic violence,
and those who live in fear (from any cause).

It was Inspired by the Iraqi author of a book co-written by Sandra Lee.  I am in wonder at her
couragous feat of enduring and then escaping, with her children, from Saddam's regime
and mostly for risking her life to write her story so this is less likely to happen again. 
She traveled across the world to seek asylum and peace from fear and terrorists. 
Because of her powerful story and what she knows, those who terrorized her in her
home country have continued to harrass her in her new country.  I resist mentioning
her by name here to protect her, but please look up Sandra Lee and her book (whose title
involves a certain promise) for it is worth reading, especially with the struggles going
on in the Middle East. 

If we do not seek to understand how terror is conceived,
we become complicit in its creation.