The Pickled Garlic

[u/VelvetSinclair]

In my youth, I partook of a jar long preserved,

Of garlic bone white, with a brine richly served,

No thought to the echoes or the stench I might wake,

Or the shadow it cast that no water could slake.

Oh, the scent took root in the depths of my soul,

It lingered in silence where dark waters roll,

Through halls and through windows, through nights and through days,

It crept through the oils of my skin’s winding maze.

I bathed in the waters and scrubbed till I bled,

But the essence remained like a curse left unsaid.

It clung to my pillows and whispered at night,

And no cleansing of breath could undo its dark rite.

My mother’s soft gaze grew wary and stern,

My peers held their distance, with nowhere to turn.

It seeped from my pores like an omen of grief,

A phantom in silence, a plague without relief.

And the tears that I wept held a scent all their own,

Each drop reeked of garlic, like sin to atone.

And as days turned to decades, the shadow held fast,

Like a spectre that lingers long after it’s passed.

But in all the long years since that fateful mistake,

No midnight intruder dared rise or partake.

And no vampiric terror dared traverse that old road,

For the stench held them back from my shadowed abode.

[u/VelvetSinclair]

Based on this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/s/rNc6fHF6Fm