I became the vessel for their volatile verbs.
The reliquary of their rancid runes.
The voice-through-which their wretched words writhed.
I opened my lungs to allow everyone's ache—
Granted them rest in my ribcage.
Their stories: shared through sacred possession.
I didn't just recite lines.
I took them in.
I wore their
Heart
Break
And
Death
In my soul,
Cradled as kin.
I let their hate, rage, ruin and sin
Borrow my breath so they could live in wind.
..And now I carry them
..Like myth-fragments crafted into my rhythm.
I'm nurturing their living archive within;
For I am their keeper of keening chaos—
A hollowed out hull, humming hallelujah—
Hanging their heirlooms of hell.
I became a bell beaten by memories.
My throat: their theorem of thundering threnodies.
They deemed my diaphragm a drum-head for the damned.
They lodged their lore in my larynx—
Their chants charring my chest.
My brain became hexed by their unholy text;
A synagogue of demonic sigils etched in every synapse.
They threaded their symphonies into my skin
And left no exit but bloodied spit.
With soul-binding sutures intimately stitched into my quips,
Each vowel I voiced
Was a revenant in motion.
An unending,
Undying
Echo of exorcisms unspoken.
Their ritual-raged regurgitations
Rotted the roots of my teeth—
Group-grief grafted
Into the grain
Of my groan.
(Each sentence soaked
In someone else's storms).
I swallowed unspeakable sentiments—
Spitting sickening syllables
Swished with the sludge
Already clinging to my gums.
No mimicry.
I was the medium.
No performances,
Only pulse.
Left with a lungful of legends and a syntax-scar.
Now I bear their exhausted,
Flickering flames
As if liturgy were ink dripping dogma..
I hush after the horrors
As they hang in the air..
And I breathe their pain
So they can be wind again,
Lest undead dread become unsaid.