The days were bleeding into nothingness,
seeping into each other like teabags left on the counter.
Each day I succumbed
to the hostility of my home nestled in your teeth.
I aspirated the saliva between your words-
pooling in your cheeks and dripping from your lips as if you were a man tasting his first food in weeks.
I stood there,
beneath you always,
with my backbone growing frail having never been used.
There came a day, though,
when my bones began to shift with a magnitude almost mistaken for an earthquake.
When my vertebrae found their nourishment in your toxins,
flourishing in the wake of a new beginning.