Rattle Your Bones

I’ve loved those

who opened their arms

as long as I knew not to spill.

The quiet ones

who slept in my silence

like it was theirs to rest in,

never noticing

how much I bled

to keep the room still.

The loud ones

who needed to feel like gods,

so I made altars of my softness

and called it worship

because I didn’t know

the name of what I was losing.

I’ve loved

the flicker of something vast

not because it stayed,

but because it showed me

what it was to be lit

without setting myself on fire.

I’ve folded myself into smaller rooms

just to be let inside.

Trimmed my edges

to slip through doors

that were never meant to hold me.

I bent

spine and voice,

breath and wanting

until I disappeared into something palatable.

And they said I was easy to love.

I waited

to be seen

by eyes that only wanted warmth,

never wonder.

And I called that love.

Control wore kindness like perfume.

Safety was a room with no air.

And fire

fire always vanished

before I could ask if it would stay

when the flames died down.

They mistook me

for a turning point.

A fever dream.

The strange girl in the story

right before the hero finds his name.

No one asked

what it cost

to be the haunting they remembered

but never chose.

I’ve been

the bed they collapsed into.

The hush before their decisions.

The echo beneath their healing.

I loved in pieces

because that’s all they reached for.

But maybe there’s more to me

than what they could carry.

More than the parts

they found beautiful

when I was quiet enough

to forget myself.

Maybe I’m still remembering

what I was

before I learned to fold.

Or maybe I was always

just on the edge

never fully here,

never fully gone.

And maybe, just maybe