#maggotlore

If there were a competition devoted to failure, they would press the trophy into my hands the moment I arrived, sparing themselves the inconvenience of watching the inevitable unfold. There is something almost ceremonial about the way ruin follows me, as though I were fashioned not for triumph, but for the slow and humiliating spectacle of collapse. Even my smallest efforts seem to rot before they fully bloom, left trembling in the dark while the maggots gather faithfully around what remains of my unfinished becoming—

I am afraid to ask whether I am worth the risk, because I fear the answer waiting beneath the surface. There is something profoundly harrowing about measuring one’s existence against the possibility of rejection, as though the soul itself must be placed upon a scale already burdened with doubt. So I keep the question buried deep within me, where it festers quietly in the dark while the maggots feed upon every fragile fragment of hope I fail to kill completely—

I am burdened with a grotesque degree of self-awareness, the kind that turns reflection into a private act of punishment. I spent much of my adolescence fastening blame onto my own ribs, replaying every wound with the conviction that I could have prevented it had I been wiser, softer, less ruinous. My nights became quiet vigils of remorse, where memory arrived hand in hand with regret, feeding slowly upon me like maggots beneath the earth. Though I try to forgive the person I once was for not knowing how to survive pain gracefully, there remains a part of me that has carried self-loathing for so long that it no longer feels like a thought, but an inheritance woven into the marrow of my being—

When I am laid six feet beneath the earth, and the quiet hunger of maggots traces the length of my neck, tasting the words I entombed within my throat, every truth I swallowed whole, every cry I sewed into silence behind sealed lips—