Poem of the Month
October 2026
My Dark Passenger 2
There is something beautiful about knowing your darkness by name.
Mine sits beside me in the quiet. Never sleeping. Just waiting.
A shadow with a pulse. A mouth full of glistening teeth. A storm folded neatly beneath my
ribs. I have seen what violence does. How quickly it blooms.
How breathtakingly red a moment can become.
How easily something human can become something monstrous.
And still, I carry it. Not like a secret. More like a relic. Something ancient I inherited from
every wound that ever taught me to just survive. Sometimes I feel it stir. A slow thing.
A beautiful thing. Like black water moving beneath delicate ice.
And I understand the temptation of it. The simplicity in it.
The terrible clarity of becoming the thing you’ve spent your whole life trying not to be.
But I don’t give into that hunger. I don’t give it my hands. I don’t give it my voice.
I don’t give it my name. I simply look at it through the glass of my own restraint and
whisper, I know what you are. And somehow that is enough.
Because there is beauty in a razor-sharp blade that remains sheathed.
Beauty in a storm that chooses to remain in the sea instead of devastation upon a city.
Beauty in a woman who knows exactly how much darkness she carries and then carries it
gently.
I am not afraid of the monster inside me. I am afraid of pretending she isn’t there.
So, I let her walk beside me. I let her whisper. I let her remind me that softness does not
mean weakness.
That mercy means nothing if you have never had the power to withhold it.
I know my darkness. I know its capabilities.
And perhaps that is the most haunting thing about me, not that I could become cruel, but
that I know exactly how to.
And still, I choose tenderness. Again. Again. Again. Not because I am incapable of violence.
But because I am capable of violence and I refuse to become it. That dark passenger still sits
beside me. Eyes open. Silent. Patient.
Beautiful in the way only dangerous things can be when they are finally understood.
And I keep driving. Into the dark. With both hands on the wheel, smiling at my dark
passenger.
Meet the Poet
C.R. Cisco (she/her) is a poetry writer and Victim Advocate living in South Carolina that focuses on feminine rage, healing, reclaiming your power, trauma, queer love and finding the beauty and empowerment in these topics. Turning pain into something healing and beautiful. She has a profound respect for resilience, not as something graceful, but as something hard earned, messy, and fiercely defiant. Her poetry lives where feminine rage meets tenderness, where queerness is celebrated without apology, and where nature becomes both sanctuary and witness. C.R. Cisco is working on her very first chapbook (Roots in Rage and Petals in Softness) as well.