“Who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”
~from The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkein

They say I am cold,
Cold and somber as the grey dawn.
I make them no answer but this:
If I am cold, it is the chill blue flame
Of nights spent in solitude;
If I am somber, it is the memory;
The suffocation and the death
Of countless dreams and hours.
My nights are filled with despair
And all my days with fire;
I will find no peace here.
I am caged, ignored,
While those of lesser strength
And weaker hearts go to battle.
The warrior’s madness
Is the force of my existence-
It feeds and magnifies my lust for glory.
Glory, and freedom;
Already I have given much to obtain them.
Long have I borne
The condemning words
And the scathing glances;
And yet I offer no repentance.
If in the darkness of the night
I have done or said aught
That would be thought foul by others,
Let them stand in my stead
For but a little while;
Let them know the feverish impatience
Of unheeded knowledge
And the bitter wasteland
Of unrequited love;
And then let them judge.
I am haunted, night and day,
By all the things
They will never allow me to be.

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