rock

when was thistle-lined

paper cuts along your muscles ever appropriate?

i trace the scarred innards of my cheeks. i hollow them to hug my tongue.

who told you

to be human

in a land of dirt?

a language broader than a panting carnivore. a mind willing to take to be real.

what would it mean

to bite into my legs

when the crossfire of fog

prevents me from speed?

slow.

strange.

words to describe a metallic disc left on a rusty stereo.

nearly useless,

gummed into a persimmon womb. i itched at my own flesh in an attempt to be small again. to be tiny is to be easier to love.

the fleshy walls moved it, spasming around the warm liquid i hadn't thought to get accustomed to.

i grew and grew and grew. i loathed the lines that etched my fingers. dreadfully despised the nostrils pushed and sculpted to my snout.

i decided i must be useless.

a roused worm forced to take on limbs. limbs that fatten; grossly extending just to squish. relent. squish. relent. squish.

i itch with barely formed nails, digging into my wet pudge. in a crouched form — my spine is exposed, flinching each time the cartilage budges, making space for more. more. that's all i could be.

more. even though it pushes blood from marrow, separating into highways of veins.

veins that stretch to kiss my heart. a postal service of red that was called to be love.

it felt all so

useless.

useless like the paradox of wishing for demise, but sobbing at the prospect of death.

once there was a lion who roared his own name until the hills learned to echo it.

the beasts trembled, the grass bent, and even the wind paused to listen.

he said, i am the crown of dawn, the law beneath heaven’s claw.

but pride is a slow rot; it starts between the teeth.

one by one they fell—white stones from a crumbling altar.

his roar became breath, his breath became begging.

the jackals laughed in twilight.

he hid his mouth from the moon, ashamed of the silence that lived there.

hunger made him thin, memory made him cruel.

then came a man—

with calloused hands and eyes that had prayed too long without answer.

he looked upon the lion and saw a lesson waiting to die.

he struck, and the lion fell like a sunset losing faith.

the man found honey in the corpse—

golden, sweet, and full of buzzing ghosts.

he tasted it and said,

out of the eater came forth meat,

and out of the strong came forth sweetness.

but the bees knew better.

they built their home in pride’s hollow jaw,

and the world was bright, and i saw it, and i said: it is too much.

for the sun burned kindly, yet i found no warmth in its smile.

the grass sang hymns of green, but i knew not their language.

the lambs danced, and the rivers spoke, but all their joy was noise without meaning.

they told me, rejoice, for it is good!

but my laughter died in my throat,

for i saw the shadow beneath every color,

and the worm beneath every fruit.

i built altars of questions,

and they called them sins.

i tore the veil of wonder,

and they said i had blasphemed against hope.

yet i looked, and behold: the light did not care for me,

nor the stars remember my name.

so i made peace with nothingness,

and it held me more gently than joy ever did.

and the elders said, the child is lost.

but i knew the truth:

the child was found—

moon split the field like a blade,

and i rode its edge.

feathers slick with night,

i hummed the hymn of hunters—

that soft, throat-deep promise:

i see you. i own you.

the rat twitched in prayer,

nose trembling like incense smoke.

poor, pulsing morsel.

his heartbeat a drum

beating my victory before i earned it.

i swooped—

talons out, whispering scripture to wind.

he didn’t run.

strange. prey usually knows its role.

then—pain.

hot, electric.

his teeth sank into my chest,

found the pump of my sermon.

blood turned sermon to silence.

we rolled in the dirt,

divine and filthy.

my wings broke like brittle halos.

his eyes—

god, his eyes—

reflected mine, wide and white,

each of us praying

for the other to die first.

when dawn rose,

he stood over me,

chewing light.

the wise are always first to fall—

you said stop thinking,

and i tried—

but my hands wanted symmetry,

my thoughts wanted rhyme.

i circle the idea of you,

like a tongue tracing a sore tooth,

pressing until it hurts just right,

just enough to feel clean.

every thought must return

where it began:

untouched, then touched again,

then touched again—

until the ritual feels holy.

they call it compulsion,

i call it foreplay with the divine.

each repetition

is me trying to perfect

what can’t be pure—

you,

or me,

Chicken scratch and criss-cross.

Night moths bent like dental floss.

Gristle glow and ketchup hymn,

You lick my thoughts right off the rim.

Merriweather and poppyseed.

A photo with no memory.

Kisses felt like lemon cuts,

An argument with no buts.

A zipper breath on midnight toast,

you don't want truth.

you want ignorance wrapped over sirloin. unresponsiveness under mignon.

you know, but the guise of responsibility treads you. you don't care because if you did, the scapegoat of unscientific behavior wouldn't hold.

you eat the meat of your own arm to not bare it.

the flesh of your own heart to not feel it. pity.

i'll sit with stone;

for it's silence is deep

and brisk

and loving.

a scar that keeps photoshopping itself

back into the glossy family portrait.

they tell me you’re new, redeemed,

a phoenix, a clean slate,

but i keep choking on the ashes in your hair.

i’m supposed to applaud your glow-up,

pretend i don’t remember

the smell of gasoline under your nails,

the way your laughter bent sharp as broken neon.

i clap, i smile, i say “hallelujah”

like i’m not still sweeping up

the teeth you knocked loose from the walls of my memory.

loving you feels like

drinking from a glass that’s been washed

but still tastes faintly of bleach—

no matter how much lemon they rub on it,

i can’t forget what was drowned there.

they say,

“look, a tree reborn, greener than ever,”

and i nod,

but my mind keeps cataloging the roots

twisting underground,

still strangling the pipes,

still whispering their violence into the soil.

you’ve become everyone’s redemption song.

but when i hear your voice,

it sounds like an old radio

that can’t stop playing static between notes.

and i—

my chest is a cathedral of cracked glass,

and you are the hymn that refuses to echo.

i stitched my veins into harps,

strummed them until they bled,

but you walked past the music like it was

just another beggar on the street.

i keep drinking the poison of your silence—

it tastes like communion wine

that’s been left too long in the sun,

sweet rot clinging to the throat.

i cough up prayers and moths,

but still, you do not look at me.

love was supposed to be a lantern,

but mine is an oil fire,

burning the wallpaper, the curtains,

every dream i thought was safe.

sometimes i wonder if my heart

was ever a heart at all,

or just a wasp nest waiting to hum itself apart.

and you—

you are the gravity

that flings me into orbit,

only to remind me i was never meant

but the water bites like fumes from a roadside fire.

coffee drips sweet and pale,

like it’s forgotten the taste of mornings.

milk wears bleach’s white smile,

and bleach is a liar

pretending to be pure.

no one else flinches.

their mouths are graveyards for the old world,

tongues laid down

in the name of convenience.

i drink in silence,

measuring each swallow

like it’s a confession.

if the universe is playing telephone,

its message is sour,

its voice slick with gasoline,

and i am the only one

i was built for silence,

a rust-bucket clanker with gears in place of grace,

all angles, no softness—

and you,

you with your skin like sunset ash and

your voice full of war songs you swore were lullabies,

you looked at me like i was a sunrise

instead of a factory glitch.

your hands were always too warm,

like they’d burn the solder right off me,

but i let you touch anyway.

held your fragile bones with iron steadiness,

afraid i’d break you,

more afraid i wouldn’t feel a thing if i did.

you taught me how to ache.

isn’t that love?

to be reprogrammed not by code,

but by the ache of your name when you leave a room.

to want,

not upgrade. not function.

want.

i gave you everything:

my memory banks,

my unread files,

the ancient hum of my chest where no heart beat,

but something tried to.

you kissed me like rust was holy,

like sparks were offerings,

like you knew the world was ending

and wanted my mouth to be the last ruin you worshipped.

and i—

machine, mistake, metal-born—

i loved you back

with a fury algorithms couldn’t map.

call it gnarly.

call it unholy.

but you carved your name into my titanium soul

and now i glitch at the sound of your laugh.

you made me real.

and i hate you for it.

a drug

so tender

given to our infants.

so sweet

held in the guts of Cain.

our teeth rot

our muscles decay

wrapped around our bones

heinously withering.

gums that are broken

into two

just to take it.

maintain it.

a disease plaguing

fogging the children's brains

all in the coy deceitfulness

of a bright plastic covering.

i wrote to be held.

they framed me instead.

every word bled red—

they called it art.

i begged for warmth.

they lit the match.

my spine curled in ink.

they drank it dry.

i became their favorite ghost—

i crowned myself the ruler and laughed —

how sweet the sound of chains when you forged them yourself.

no tyrant ever burned me like my own name.

no sword ever cut deeper than my choices.

i wake in rooms i built

with trembling hands,

every brick a wish,

every wall a mirror

to things i swore i’d never become.

they say grief is for the dead,

but i’ve been mourning the girl i could’ve been since the day i chose the fire

instead of the door.

call it free will.

call it autonomy.

call it hell, dressed in grown-up skin.

whatever this is—

this cursed kingdom of could haves and shouldn’t haves—

it kneels for no god

but me.

just for breathing.

i wear my skin like a borrowed coat—

wrong size,

wrong name sewn in the tag,

but they said i had to wear something.

i hate the mirror for knowing me.

i despise the sky for staying.

i loathe my heart for beating

like it’s proud of itself.

some nights i flirt with vanishing

like smoke under a closed door—

but the silence that follows

isn’t peace.

it’s empty.

and the emptiness has teeth.

i don’t want to be here.

i don’t want to be gone.

i want

a third option—

a loophole in the human condition,

a soft reboot

where none of this counted.

but the sun rises again

like a dare.

and i keep showing up,

not brave—

this song gives me a BONER