Low self-esteem can literally destroy a human being.
It starts as a whisper, a shadow at noon,
A thief in the garden that withers the bloom.
It sits in the marrow, it settles in bone,
Building a kingdom where one is alone.
It is mirrors that lie, distorting the light,
Turning the morning to permanent night.
It crafts every failure with surgical care,
And braids every worry into despair.
It acts like an anchor, heavy and deep,
While promises falter and bitterness keeps.
It feeds on the spirit, it drinks up the pride,
Till there’s nowhere left for the self to reside.
It is silence that screams, it is doubt that commands,
It crumbles the resolve in trembling hands.
Until, like a slow-burning house in the rain,
The structure collapses under its own strain.
For it doesn’t strike once with a blade or a blow,
It kills like the winter, steady and slow;
A desert of spirit, a hollowed-out tree—
The quiet undoing of all you could be.