half-sick of shadows

Not as a guest. Not as an ally. But as a prisoner.

Because the thing is, the moment Pharazôn lays eyes on her, he sees an opportunity. The High King of the Noldor’s favorite warrior, a living relic of a bygone war, stranded in his kingdom? That’s leverage. That’s a prize. And so, she’s detained—for her own safety, of course, kept in the gilded cage of Armenelos while Númenor decides what to do with her.

While there, she meets this Middle-earth dude who's there for insulting the Chancellor.

Not a king. Not even a ruler in exile. Just as a man with a past he won’t speak of, a position at court no one quite understands, and a habit of slipping into places he shouldn’t be.

And Galadriel—who has spent centuries carving her name into history with the edge of a sword, takes one look at him and sees a liar, a coward, a man who could be so much more if he’d only let himself want it.

He hates her on sight.

Because she looks at him like she knows him, like she can see straight through the carefully constructed nothing he’s made of himself, and he can’t decide if he wants to throw her into the sea or drown in her himself.

So naturally, he helps her escape.

(It’s a terrible plan. She gets caught. He gets caught. They’re both thrown into the dungeons, where she realizes that whatever Halbrand is, Pharazôn fears him more than he fears her.)

And that’s when she starts asking questions.

(And that’s when he starts lying, because if she ever figures out the truth, she’ll never let him go.)

But it’s too late.

Because the moment they step outside those prison walls, he follows her like a shadow. And when she stands before Númenor’s court and speaks of war, he stands at her back, silent and watching.

NO BUT THAT’S EXACTLY IT

In the chapel,

in a bedroom,

in an alley late at night.

Always facing an inflated

godlike

version of some guy.

But as a girl you do what you need to survive.

You open wider, take the body.

Thank your father, you’ve been naughty.

2 Hail Marys, 20 lashings.

“I’ve been sent to punish you for daring to exist.

You will never know a love as meaningful as this.”

I’ve memorized

the lines

since I was 10.

From the Bible,

from the playbook,

from the magazines for men.

If you should mess it up, you’ll start again.

But, still, they only want

the women

they condemn.

I think that I’d have too much fun in hell.

With the pagans

and the hedonists

and sapphics there as well.

Purgatory seems the better fit

I can’t stand waiting in the corner,

but I do love being hit.

There’s not a torture you can prescribe

that I wouldn’t find

a way to like.

Every single second I’m alive

I’m sharpening an axe I’d like to grind.

“I was sent to punish you

for the way I was designed.

You will never know a love

that you fear more than mine.”

I have been awake since before the breaking of the first silence.