Master Puppeteer by Shaznay Botha

Okay look.
I feel it in my bones.
Like it’s made a permanent residence within my soul.
Feels like there’s nowhere to go.
I’m screaming and crying internally.
Desperately wanting it out.
Wanting an out.
I wish I could express this externally
But doing so would only hurt everyone
Emotionally.
Hurt
Pain
Anger
Sadness
Numb.
I feel numb
But I don’t
I cry and know that I won’t feel better
Because I feel nothing knowing that
I know nothing.
I want to disappear.
I wish to cease to exist.
To erase every single trace of me.
The laugh that echoes in the caves
The smile that is cemented in the walls of their hearts and minds
The gleeful screams and shrieks that are carried in the wind.
The tears that flow in the rivers of their souls.
The anger that sets their skin ablaze.
The fear that revealed black holes in their eyes.
The Sadness that danced around their embrace.
The betrayal that lingered in the air.
The lies that created realities that simply slipped off their tongue.
The truth that tossed and turned in the night confined within their lungs encased by their ribcage.
Society never really cared.
People never really cared.
No one really cared when you needed them to.
When you were painting the world red with your rage and pain.
When you were slashing away at every single part of you that longed to be freed.
When you kept sinking into the depths of the unknown.
Essentially drowning in your own blood.
Your misery longed for company
But you would not allow it.
It didn’t matter what you did.
In the end
People
Society
And every one that was supposed to care
Whatever you did, would never be enough
Never be quite right
Never be good enough
So why did you still care so much?
Why did it still hurt and eat away at you every time someone got something wrong about you?
After all, you were the one to have carefully and painstakingly curated the image that they saw before them.
How could they possibly be wrong,
When all they did was follow through with what you had created.
You were the one pulling the strings.
The people were the marionette doll or the puppet and you were their master behind the scenes pulling all the strings
Putting on a performance like no other
It had gone on for years really
A tale as old as time.
It would not stop until you stopped.
Until you either gave into the pain and be deemed the monster that you had already written yourself as.
Or change the narrative because this is just one chapter the story is not finished yet.

Shaznay wrote their first poem at the age of 14. She fell in love with the art form and began to learn more about it from that point onwards. Writing has been an outlet as well as a means for expression for them. Her writing style has changed over the years based on the consumption of media from varying genre’s and languages. They are a rather weird, spontaneous and awkward individual with a love for adventure and hopefully learning to overcome anxiety or nerves by trying new things out of their comfort zone.