Beneath the laughter’s gilded sheen,
A darker pulse begins, unseen.
Where sunlight danced on open fields,
Dark shadows creep, and mercy yields.

The games we played with open hearts
Now sharpen into jagged darts.
A gentle word, a hand once kind,
Turns talon, claw, and twisted mind.

The songbird’s trill, so pure and bright,
Transforms to shriek in dead of night.
The feast of friends, the clinking glass,
Becomes manhunt as hours pass.

In circles once of trust and grace,
Now hunger carves a different face.
The bonds that held us, firm and strong,
Are torn by want, not right and wrong.

A smile that shined in morning’s gold
Now bares its teeth, grown fierce and cold.
The laughter echoes, warped and wild,
No longer tender, but reviled.

The forest’s peace, the river’s song,
Are drowned by cries that don’t belong.
Where once we danced in careless glee,
We prowl in packs, no longer free.

We build our walls, then blur the lines,
Forget the gentle, shatter the signs.
The joy that bound us, thread by thread,
Unravels fast as laws are shred.

Now joy is carrion for the crows,
Devoured where the black wind blows.
We dance on bones of what we were,
Gnawed by rot no dawn can cure.

No light remains to mourn or see—
We revel in our savagery.
We crowned ourselves with vulture lies—
Now city ruins swarm with flies.