I Wont Become You

Slow breath.

Black room.

Old scars.

New moon.

There’s a voice in the walls

With my father’s teeth.

There’s a ghost in my blood

Still hunting me.

I learned to flinch before I learned to fight,

Learned to sleep with one eye open every night.

Your shadow had hands, your silence had weight,

Your love was a lock and your house was a cage.

You called it discipline.

You called it truth.

You left your fingerprints

On the throat of my youth.

But I buried your name

Where the dead things crawl.

And I swore to the dark

I would outlive it all.

Something ugly wakes inside,

Scratching bone and splitting hide.

It says, “Be cruel. Be cold. Be stone.”

But that voice is yours—

And it dies alone.

I won’t become you!

I won’t wear your chains!

I won’t let your poison

Crawl inside my veins!

I won’t become you!

I won’t feed the flame!

You can leave me with the darkness,

But you don’t get my name!

There’s a sickness in the silence you left behind,

A black dog howling at the back of my mind.

It chews through the door when the night gets thin,

Wearing your face, trying to get back in.

I have broken mirrors.

I have kissed the floor.

I have begged my own reflection

To be something more.

But every time I fall,

Every time I bleed,

I hear the child I was

Still calling out to me.

Something hungry bares its teeth,

Begging me to rot beneath.

It says, “Hate is how you stay alive.”

But I am still breathing—

And I choose the sky.

I won’t become you!

I won’t wear your chains!

I won’t let your poison

Crawl inside my veins!

I won’t become you!

I won’t feed the flame!

You can leave me with the darkness,

But you don’t get my name!

I am not your anger.

I am not your fist.

I am not the broken thing

You tried to twist.

I am not your shadow.

I am not your sin.

I am not the war

You buried in my skin.

I am the door left open.

I am the match gone cold.

I am the scared kid standing

Where the grown man takes hold.

And if the dark still wants me,

Let it crawl.

Let it scream.

Let it starve.

You don’t own me.

You don’t haunt me.

You don’t break me.

You don’t want me free.

You don’t own me.

You don’t haunt me.

You don’t break me.

I am not your legacy.

I won’t become you!

I won’t wear your chains!

I won’t let your poison

Crawl inside my veins!

I won’t become you!

I won’t feed the flame!

You can leave me with the darkness,

But you don’t get my name!

I won’t become you!

I won’t rot in place!

I’ll carve my way from the coffin

With blood on my face!

I won’t become you!

I won’t die in shame!

You can leave me with the darkness—

But you don’t get my name!

Slow breath.

Black room.

Old scars.

New moon.

There’s a voice in the walls

Getting weaker beneath.

There’s a ghost in my blood—

And it’s learning to leave.