Noises and PTSD

There’s a rhythmic booming sound
It’s a fist banging against at a door while someone cowers in the corner of the room on the other side
Hoping the lock will hold as the wood shivers with the pounding…
No, he assures me, it’s just some hammering or someone on the stairs

No, it’s a heavy thumping
It’s the rough and tumble struggle of a fight while children cry in their beds beneath the covers
Promises that everything will be alright fall as loudly as a body thrown to the ground…
It’s okay, he says, just neighbors dropping things on the floor

Wait, there’s a voice screaming
It must be voice of someone calling for help, someone in trouble, lives at stake
A fervent request for aid as the darkness closes in…
A television in the next apartment, he says, just relax

Shhhh, it’s the sound of tapping
There must be someone locked in a room with no way to escape, a prisoner quivering in fear
Tapping out a call for help in hopes that someone will listen…
His face and his lips say no, it’s all in my mind,

PTSD turns the harmless into the harmful, hypervigilance, nothing is safe,
I want to believe him, but maybe he’s just covering for them….

 

Written by 

DMG Byrnes is an author with a book addiction: reading and writing them. She is in the process of looking for the right agent to represent her first novel, The Foretelling Spark. She also writes poetry and short stories, publishing short pieces of fiction on the Fiction Fridays page of her website every week. She is a survivor of abuse and sexual assault living with C-PTSD, a chronic illness warrior, and on the side, a dragon tamer. She has a Bachelor’s degree in psychology that took her 9 years to earn and taught her that if it’s important enough to you, you’ll make it happen, no matter how slowly you have to go, a lesson she tries to remember when she’s writing.

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