Bleeding Eyes

How do you hide inexplicable cries
When the darkest of secrets bleeds through your eyes?
...the pain you leave beneath the soil
Flowers into seething toil
Foils the grasp of comprehension
Of passersby who lend you attention

Seconds tick, eons pass
Tethered to an infinite mass
Of events you can't explain..
Attempts at this are led in vain
In the darkest chasm of your mind
Lies a part you no one can find

The hardest part is that I see
This pain is now a part of me

Years ago she left this place
Never looking back
But I'm still here
Her darkest era
Her disgrace
Is now my home
She fears
Revisiting this place
To see
The epitome of her misery
For all this fear
She doesn't know
The worst thing she did
Long ago
If she came back
She wouldn't find
Her son
In her
Eternal bind
Down here
This hole
Where I atone
For her mistakes
Aching
Alone

Author notes

This expresses the pain of coming to terms with severe, prolonged emotional abuse stemming from parental alcoholism. It mainly describes how the extreme negative emotions I felt were still visible to everyone around me. When people ask you what's wrong you can't unload (much less truly communicate) such a heavy burden, especially if they're not extremely close. In effect that created a wholly new kind of pain. None of the people I was close to even had a clue it ran as deep as it did, and misinterpreted my teenage self as being excessively entrenched in cliched 'teen angst'. In that light, which is where I ended the poem, I went through all of the pain alone.
The bit about the 'worst thing' I mention here refers to the fact that my mom doesn't have (and refuses to get) a clue about how much she scarred me and how much it continued (and still does, to a tediously waning extent) to affect my life.
I've since moved elsewhere, though, and have learned to control my thinking when memories of that era surface and can steer myself away and be happy.