Nightmare Before Christmas | Teen Ink

Nightmare Before Christmas

October 6, 2021
By adair3583 SILVER, Greenville, South Carolina
adair3583 SILVER, Greenville, South Carolina
6 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Every poem should tell a story.


We all love a good scare.

A damsel in distress 

pleading for her life.

A cowardly soul thinks 

this couldn't happen to me.

But real life happens,

boogeymen come to be.


Tragedy struck-

A nightmare before Christmas,

as we lay vulnerable and bare,

bells crept slowly in the distance.

Sounds of magic filtered the air,

while the demons of my room began to stare.


A few hours ‘til the day of peace,

but hopes for it's arrival began to cease.

Something’s wrong-

I feel it, I know it.

My brain’s beating so hard,

that I could take it out and throw it.

My intuition is singing a song!


But I can't move-

I know something’s happening,

not yet to prove.

My innocence is too pure,

for me to get up and go traveling.

Sleeping feels like an injustice,

that film feels like destruction.

No movie could prepare me for

this deadly production.


“Go back to sleep, John,”

(Menacingly)

the demons are yelling.

“Someone help!”

she began belting.


The demons scurried back to their hell.

My conscience devoid of words to tell.

It came down to this unsure decision,

but I had a plan of great precision.

Up and out, my house was still,

like the lonely nest perched atop the hill.

Moving my feet summoned all of my might.

The monsters and demons hid well out of sight.


Made my way down the dreadful hall, 

She made one more attempt for a cardinal call.

“I'm gonna make it; I’m gonna do it!” the boy proclaimed.

Soon reality slapped him, realizing he was too late.


What has happened? There's no killer to be seen.

No movie could prepare me for this deadly scene.

I don't understand, logical thoughts are no more.

Mostly because he was only just four.


There went stepdad, out the door he walked

Just as 12 struck the hooting clock.

Caring about Christmas has caused me much trauma.

Laying down on the empty floor...

Was only my mama

“Mama?”


The author's comments:

I wanted to think about my favorite themes which are the holidays Halloween and Christmas, but needed a way to work both of them in, so I came up with a child's Christmas nightmare. I didn't want it to be an ordinary Christmas horror story, that's why it's in the child's perspective. He had just watched a scary movie and what he saw was lingering in his head before bed. He starts hearing a woman scream, and starts thinking of the worst things and he just sits there because he's too young. He gets the courage to go help the lady, but turns out it was his mother getting assaulted and killed by his stepdad. I took a hard life problem like domestic violence, then put it in a child's point of view, of him thinking that something like what he saw in the movie was actually happening. I've learned that my go to is storytelling poetry. 


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