PTSD - A double Villanelle poem

You can’t breathe behind the mask you show

Having an unseen disorder is like blackmail, 

So you keep it in, no one can know. 

Drowning in shame, the longer you go. 

The screams bubble in your throat - free with one exhale;

You can’t breathe behind the mask you show.

In your career you grow and grow, 

If you crack they see you as nothing but frail, 

So you keep it in, no one can know. 

The flashbacks start, you can feel the echoes

Memories a blur of fearful chaos, there is no detail

You can’t breathe behind the mask you show.

The mask is slipping, quick - crack a joke

You go numb to the world or else you’ll fail

So you keep it in, no one can know. 

Its getting bad again, the madness’s creep slow

Naively you thought you could dodge the assail. 

You can’t breathe behind the mask you show

So you keep it in, no one can know. 

It eats at you, like acid on the brain

banishing away the semblance of rational thought,

playing out like ghosts reliving their death day. 

you’re back in its grasp, drowning in shame

You try to remember the tools you were taught - but

It eats at you, like acid on the brain

You cannot escape it, feeling insane

Their faces, their voices, they scream and taunt

playing out like ghosts reliving their death day.

Emotions, sights, and sounds overcome you in a hurricane

Concentration is lost on the winds they’ve brought

It eats at you, like acid on the brain

Fatigue devours your body, leaving you lame

Flashbacks whisper, stealing the peace you’ve sought

playing out like ghosts reliving their death day.

Constantly alert, unsafe and forever afraid,

Drowning in madness, you scream distraught:

“It eats at you, like acid on the brain!”

You are but a ghost reliving their death day.