Recursive Bloodened Nightfall
And slivers of brighter places
(Trigger warning: Domestic violence, mild gore obliquely mentioned)
Pierced by singular point
in space and time,
there you dwell
in eternal life’s
unyielding twilight,
dying over and over
in agonizing arrest,
root to stem
coming undone
from dusk’s random blight;
innocent’s mortal wound
preexisting well beyond
primary buds’ unfurling
towards ragged breath,
gasping for a scream
that would go unanswered,
even if you could grasp it;
you cannot go back,
save for rumination,
you cannot redo,
though you must relive,
you cannot move on,
save for denial,
all roads born from this torment
rest astride ouroboros,
as recrimination coils,
begetting switchback, curved towards
recontextualization
of the same bloodened nightfall.
Dropping the knife,
your mother fled the scene
through the back door
to save herself;
your father, left bleeding,
was led through the front door
towards life-saving aid;
on the dining room floor,
your baby brother crawled,
blissfully unaware
that he was in dire need
of someone’s saving,
but at six years old,
you’re a shattered sapling
blighted by a haunted forest,
a broken wisp of a willow,
weeping in the living room,
standing near the end,
at the beginning of learning
no one is coming to save you.
This is where you live.
This is where you died.
This is where you learned
to hide deeper inside.
This is where you lost it all,
including access to you;
your very own Self.
You’re still sitting there,
clinging to yourself,
suspended across decades,
wide-eyed, terrified,
grieving in contradictions,
longing for much less,
and far more than this breaking,
this singular point, shattered
at visible bitter ends,
though you know not how to mend,
in fading light, you see them;
slivers of brighter places;
connection, peace, belonging;
an understanding oneness
you only saw in fiction;
television or worn books
read so often, the binders
often come undone
in hands long accustomed
to losing it all,
but try as you might,
you have never felt the warmth
of that healing sunrise
upon leaf or shoot within
your realm of reality.
That’s not where you live,
for it is within our twilight
where you were abandoned,
and here, steeped in indigo,
the sun is always leaving.
© BJ Dawson — 2026
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National Domestic Violence Hotline:
Beautiful piece of writing BJ