Chromatic04.com

Feeling hollow during this long winter break. I have the luxury during the semester of forgetting how draining (for lack of a better word) going back to my parents can be. Wrote this poem about it a short few minutes ago. Freeform with little rhyme but hopefully a bit of reasoning, explained at the bottom as normal.

“Carbon Monoxide”

Enter the kind predator’s den
Shoulder off the weight pulling you down
You can breathe. Oh, breathe,
Where living is deadly

The alarm rings, false smoke,
And coming to consciousness at midnight
The diverged waves remain steady
No sound is heard from this pen

It looks the same. Air and poison.
Ignored the waves, ignored the drowning
Ignored the predator, ignored the hollowness
And now, hollow.

—

Breakdown:

“Enter the kind predator’s den” (line 1)
– Reference to my *wonderful* mother. She’s the kindest person anyone knows, unless you are her child.

“Shoulder off the weight pulling you down / You can breathe. Oh, breathe,” (lines 2-3)
– Home is supposed to be where you can breathe, exist, unburdened.
– First line is a metaphor for ‘my troubles melting away,’ but could be read literally in reference to shrugging off my backpack (studies) during the break

“Where living is deadly” (line 4)
– Triple entendre; 1) Predator/prey dynamics, playing off of first line, 2) The cause of my depression is home (my mother, specifically), and living here has proven deadly, 3) First reference to carbon monoxide

“The alarm rings, false smoke, / And coming to consciousness at midnight” (lines 5-6)
– Another subtle reference to carbon monoxide; there are alarms for it, but many do not have one; specifically, this first alarm is NOT carbon monoxide, as one would likely not come to consciousness if they were breathing in a lot of carbon monoxide while sleeping
– A few years ago, all of our fire alarm batteries died in a span of a couple weeks, and we got used to them going off in the middle of the night. It was horrible for everyone involved.

“The diverged waves remain steady” (line 7)
– ‘Waves’ as in soundwaves, and they have split off from those original alarms; there’s still an alarm ringing, but a different one now

“No sound is heard from this pen” (line 8)
– Yet again, holds multiple meanings; 1) An animal pen, playing on that predator/prey metaphor, 2) Writing this poem and all of my words over the years, where no sound is heard by others yet it writes (and a secret 3) “If a tree falls with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?”)

“It looks the same. Air and poison.” (line 9)
– Carbon monoxide.

“Ignored the waves, ignored the drowning / Ignored the predator, ignored the hollowness” (lines 10-11)
– Growing up, until late 2020, I hadn’t realized how bad my home situation was
– Thus, I ignored the soundwaves (the alarms), ignored drowning in this house (literal waves), ignored my mom (the predator) and ignored how horrible I felt (I thought it was normal.)

“And now, hollow.”
– There’s a quote from Dark Souls, “Don’t you dare go hollow,” and I saw it tattooed on someone last week. It hit me hard (and understand, I don’t know anything about Dark Souls)
– I fear that I saw that quote too late, that I am now hollow.

Until next time,

– Chromatic

*Posted on December 18, 2024.*