Die

How the Spirit Spoils

At twenty-seven,

the mirror keeps receipts.

Every sleepless Tuesday,

every bottle tipped like a confession

into the dark mouth of the sink

or my own.

Friends talk about mortgages,

babies, retirement funds.

I talk to bartenders

like priests who stopped believing long ago.

The nights blur together

neon halos, shaking hands,

a liver learning how to forgive

what the heart cannot.

I keep telling myself

I’m still young enough

to outrun the damage,

but youth is a door that closes quietly.

One day you just notice

the lock has turned.

And somewhere inside me

a softer voice still whispers,

“before the soul goes to waste.”

So I stand in the kitchen at 2 a.m.,

water running cold over my wrists,

wondering if redemption

is a place you crawl toward

or a fire you walk through.

Twenty-seven feels ancient

when you’ve spent years

trying not to feel anything at all.

But maybe the miracle is this

the body still wakes up,

the heart still drags itself forward,

and somewhere beneath the ruin