Violence is Vulnerable

A beast lives within me.
She is called Violence.
She wears a leather tourniquet
For her heart made of stone.
Brutal and calloused,
She eats the sun
Like an orange,
And dances in the darkness
That her soul leaves behind.

I hear her coming
With a banshee scream,
Beneath the noise of the world
Her footsteps sound of roaring flames.
I feel her burning
In a crowded room,
She thrashes about
And tears at the surface.

Her smile is a cut
With shards of glass within,
A bleeding wound of destruction
She bites and gnarls at her cage.

But when we're alone and you cradle me,
Gently in your arms,
Caressing my hair
Then sketching with your fingertips across my brow,
She is at peace
Like a domestic kitten
Docile and complacent
She purrs softly a grateful hum
For the warmth of your tender salvation.