Raw, and filled with pain Angel Chadwick writes from a bruised heart. Her evocative poems are short burst of anger, a person victimized by things happening around her, the words ever so more meaningful because she is aware what is happening to her. Sometimes full of rage, other times, remorseful, the poems change from a slavish love, to the outcry of an abused partner, both reflecting her comprehension that she is stuck, a prisoner to her feeling.
"I am Darkness and so is he
We are one in the same
Don't you see?"
She grows from victim to survivor with the wounds to show for it, with the poignant cry,"Should it hurt to love, to be loved?"
"Devout" is a brilliant observation about rejecting goodness, embracing the violence of darker side, knowing the pain will come rather than thinking things might be better in the light. Light, Chadwick states "Is the creeper It lies Weaves its spells Tells it's tale of healing..." Clearly she feels safer with the reliability of the pain rather than the promise of peace, the disappointment when it fails to deliver. Darkness is "Faithful to the core I know it will hurt me, make me bleed more It has no qualms or scruples." It's safer, more comforting for hope to be dead.
"The Quest" is filled with self-loathing, the hatred of being "Lost in the shadows with no place to run." Coupled with the brutal realization, "...I feel like I am obsessed to being in this life"
This was a brilliant collection, honest and pure, a reflection of different stages of life, of passion and pain, the words carefully weaving a spell on the reader, dragging them into the author's world.