#b4tkill4

people starving and going naked in this land of too much to eat and too much to wear. you ripped your sackcloth and bled your tears as the flashes of fame printed your falsetto of shame by the pound.

i couldn't look at you.

i couldn't stand you.

your money fanned over the gold beads of sweat from the weary. the children with torn hands.

your pride as your bread, and my blood as your drink.

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,

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