the monsters
the monsters were never under my bed.
they were in my parents.
tight in their jaws,
quiet in the car rides,
boiling behind nice dinners and
“be seen and not heard.”
they didn’t roar
they criticized.
they wept at the wrong times.
they needed me to save them.
they taught me to disappear politely.
i spent years fighting ghosts
that weren’t mine,
apologizing for weather
i didn’t create.
now the monsters live in me.
they wake up when i do.
they hold the steering wheel.
they tweet.
and honestly,
my parents were good parents.
but their monsters had kids too.
and I guess I looked like a fun one to play with.
and sometimes, when i make a joke instead of crying,
i can feel the monsters grin.
rach
This poem doesn’t scream it trembles. Rach writes with the kind of honesty that feels like a bruise pressed gently. The monsters here aren’t fantasy they’re inherited, absorbed, disguised as love, discipline, silence. What’s most human is the contradiction: parents who were “good,” yet carried wounds that taught their child to vanish politely. The poem doesn’t blame it mourns. It traces how trauma becomes ritual, how jokes replace tears, how the monsters learn to grin inside us. And still, there’s tenderness. A quiet knowing that naming the monsters is the first act of healing. Not to exile them, but to understand the child they chose to play with.
We're likely from different generations, but this connected big time. Spot on