There’s a Black Cloud building somewhere beyond my mental horizon,

Steeping like strong black tea,

Swirling like a cauldron of witches’ brew,

Powerful, foul, evil.

There’s a Black Cloud building in the recesses of my mind,

Bubbling up, bubbling up,

Not seen, nor smelled, nor heard,

Yet felt so strongly it pierces my mind’s tongue.

Why Black Cloud visit me after all these years?

You were hidden away like a terrible secret,

The kind your mind longs only to forget,

Powerful, foul, evil.

My mind’s eye cracks open and Black Cloud descends,

Twisting, torturing.

The world is suddenly a gray landscape,

And I have been reduced to a child.

I sit upon my mother’s bed, knees bent, innocent.

The door swings open and Black Cloud stumbles into the room.

What once filled the doorway now fills the bedroom.

Voices clash as Black Cloud whips at my mother.

Her arms are thrown in front of her face.

He pelts her with his fists in rage.

Will I ever forget my father’s glare

When he turned his menacing eyes toward me?

Can I forget my mother’s sobs?

And does the mother comfort the child

Or does he somehow comfort her?

My greatest fear is that she’s broken.

But, she is not!

Stronger that even the Black Cloud that pelted her

She teaches her child to forget that horror.

The world is a vivid landscape of joy and opportunity.

The future is blessed.

Life moves forward and Black Cloud shrinks

Into the deepest holes the mind can drill.

Covered with happier days, he disappears.

Gone for forty years

Black Cloud hauntingly returns one day,

A painful reminder of a gray day

When time took tortured steps.

He didn’t just spring up one day, but gathered strength

And somehow unloosed himself from within my mind.

But by coming back, Black Cloud is now gone forever.

Strange that such pain can bring such relief.

There was a Black Cloud building somewhere beyond my mental horizon,

Steeping like strong black tea,

Swirling like a cauldron of witches’ brew,

Powerful, foul, evil.

There was a Black Cloud building somewhere in the recesses of my mind,

Bubbling up, bubbling up,

Not seen, nor smelled, nor heard,

Yet felt so strongly tasted it pierced my mind’s tongue.

Why Black Cloud did you visit me after all these years?

You were hidden away like a terrible secret,

The kind your mind longs only to forget,

And now you are gone forever.