Red: a poem about anger

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By Sara Onitsuka
​AFO content writer

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Content Warning: Self-harm


In the pit of my stomach
there lies a double-sealed
triple-padlocked chain-wrapped door.

A demon who has never
fully seen the light of day
lives on the other side

swamp fire rage demon I can
only describe the horror
because I have felt it.

Originally the door was just
a door no reinforcements
to hold the demon at bay.

The demon then would reach
its ugly deep red hot hand through
the doorway through my stomach through

my throat out my eyes and throw
the world spinning into a film
of burning red.

Losing a sense of myself like
losing the key to my house,
to a demon with bloodshot anger.

Locked out. Red.
Screaming. Red. 
Pounding. Red.
Uncontrollable. Red.

In desperation:
Pain.

Pain, a temporary respite,
seemed the only hammer to shatter 
the brick wall of red. Over and over:

Red. Pain. White.
Red. Pain. Clarity.
Red. Pain. Relief. 

Only for a second except
the seconds were too precious
to miss. I craved seconds like

a second serving, hungry
for presence and time. Over years spent
searching for an exorcist

self-blame over suppression
tactics, the demon is double,
triple, locked away.

I pulled at the doors til my palms
bled blue to ensure that if
I couldn't get in it couldn't get
out.

We are mirrors, after all.

But a thought has begun to trickle
from the depths. it asks: "if you
never confront the demon

how will you vanquish it?
Imprisonment is a kind
of fixation; an effort

bordering on obsession."
One of these days I hope
to let the demon out into the light

and I hope the light
is what kills it.


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This poem is a second iteration of one I tried to write years ago. More recently as I've continued moving away from a survival mentality into one where I can process deeply and thrive, I've begun to want to explore the things within myself that I had purposefully locked away. Anger is probably the biggest and heaviest of those things.

It's not easy to admit that sometimes I'm scared of myself and my own anger. I have described my anger in the past as being bigger than my frame, and in this poem I describe it as a demon separate from myself, because sometimes it really feels like that. In the past and in particular after traumatic events, my anger has been so overpowering that I've quite literally "seen red" as the phrase goes, and felt the need to hurt myself to lower the red screen for even a second. In these moments it feels as though I'm locked within a shell, consumed by a thick wall of rage, and all I can really do is cry.

If it is so powerful within me, I am always terrified, then, what my anger could look like unleashed on the world. So I keep it wrapped up. But the very fact that I am locking it up so tightly is beginning to feel like giving it too much power.

I'm not quite sure how to do this yet, but I know I need to find some way to release this hold. I think the first step is no longer seeing it as bigger than me - not diminishing it, but to giving reason to its existence instead of visualizing it as an uncontrollable monster. This anger didn't appear out of nowhere. It is not an unexplainable mystery. It is the way my body has carried the weight of living under capitalism, generational trauma, and multiple converging oppressions. It has built up over the years from feeling hurt and taken advantage of and being unable or unwilling to express that to the people who hurt me. This has been my protection; at the base of my anger is fear. How curious it is that fear of the world has led to fear of myself. What a journey I am on to let it go.

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