spiral lintel
You were a thunderclap I mistook for a hymn,
a wonderfully violent storm
headache and heartache fused at the spine,
a blade we sharpened on each other’s hips.
Now the drum remains: relentless thrum
of a war-god’s fist splitting the sky’s hymn.
We named this ruin a truce,
a choreography of scissors
snipping the thread between us
your hands steady,
mine trembling,
both pretending not to bleed.
You rise, a phoenix gorged on my pyre
while I tunnel, blind earthworm,
choking on the soil of your indifference.
How swiftly you molted my name,
left me gnawing on roots,
asking the dirt:
When did I become a ghost in your garden?
I’ll dress my rage as fiction:
paint you villain, call it mercy,
just to sleep through the night.
Let me unravel the rigging of “us”
ships that docked in the same harbor,
one bound for heaven, one for hell.
We charted tides but never stars,
anchored where the waves forgot
to warn us how storms pretend
to be shelter.
Now blame hums in my marrow,
a hymn I chant to punish either shore
your ease at sailing on,
my fists still clenched around the anchor.
I wore my wings as apologies,
clung to your hem, a moth convinced
its dust could douse your flame.
But I’ll stitch my silence into something sharp—
smile polished to a blade,
swallow the words that swarm my throat.
You burn—golden, reborn—
while I scatter, ash unmoored,
a diaspora of might-have-beens
choking the throat of the wind.
Even the sky mourns unevenly:
you get horizon, I get haze.
What’s a harbor but a place to leave?
What’s a storm but a season’s grief?
I’ll let the tide reclaim its wreckage
no verdict, no villain, just salt and ache
as the deep swallows what we couldn’t keep.
You are not a knot for my hands to untie.
I am not a hymn for your lips to revise.
Let me dissolve into the quiet
where endings don’t bruise,
where peace pools, deep and patient,
beneath this skin of scars.
#🖇・poetry-feedback-help
lavish hawk
rich flame
quiet vale