I am the shell of a cathedral,
my ribs stripped bare,
dust grinds against my marrow.
Smoke coils, ghost-thin,
a lover's last exhalation,
its fingers press against
the hollows of my throat.

Stained glass eyes—
shattered saints, shattered demons.
Their colors bleed across my skin,
an abstract of wars long silenced,
their screams etched in my spine.
I house their echoes
like a mausoleum,
their whispers scraping my eardrums.

The earth betrayed me once—
a trembling, violent lover.
Its hands split me open,
toppled my crown.
Now I wear my wounds like jewels,
a monument to collapse.

Sleep eludes me.
What lullaby holds the dead?
Their songs thread the air,
soft as ash, sharp as shards.
I lie beneath their melody,
each note a needle in my sternum.

And yet, I do not crumble.
Something fierce and hollow in me
clings to this ruin—
a hymn for no one,
a prayer to nothing.

We inherit it,
the pain—handed down like a family curse,
wrapped in silence,
placed in our laps without instruction.
You sit at the table,
mouth full of bitterness,
and they call it strength,
the way you chew and swallow.
But what if it’s not?
What if it’s a trick—
the wizard behind the curtain,
the demon in the machine,
smiling as we feed
it something we never agreed to give?

I don’t want to live this way,
a specimen pinned beneath glass,
but maybe we are experiments—
flesh and bone trials of endurance,
while the saints walk among us
with their straight spines
and sparkling teeth,
their hair soft as untouched sin.

They hide their hunger well.
The lust stays pressed beneath their skin,
simmering in the quiet places.
But us—
we wear it raw,
this separation between grace and grit,
our hands calloused from holding too much.

If I could save you,
I would.
I’d press my lips to your wounds,
turn salt tears into something sweet,
lick the pain away like sugar,
dig a hole in the sky
for us to hide in—a pocket of forever.

I could love you like that:
diamond-bright,
shattered and whole all at once,
each edge catching the light,
each facet its own language of care.

But this story—this terrible, beautiful story—
it keeps pulling us forward,
through the mud and the starlight.
Some days we’re saints.
Some days we’re demons.
Most days, we’re just trying to hold
what lies in between.

We could wear disguises,
play pinball with our choices,
watch them ricochet off the walls of who we are,
ringing out in bursts of chaos,
neon lights illuminating the mess,
until the machine tilts—
or we do.
Maybe that’s the trick:
to laugh as we play,
to let the disguise slip now and then,
and call it living.

My Muse arises from his infinite sleep,
A whisper in the chasm where shadows creep.
In dream, I wander, blind and bare,
A child of silence, feeling air.

The trees, skeletal, shake their spines,
Releasing relics from hidden shrines—
Trinkets, tokens, sins of old,
Each frozen now in hues so cold.

Scarred and brittle, the silhouette breaks,
Bones through black, the body aches.
Yet dew, soft balm, on wounds does fall,
A salve for the soul—if anything at all.

His kiss is death; his promise, surrender,
A union cruel, both dark and tender.
But light unmasks what shadows veil;
The birdcage opens; the spirit sails.

The seed, though scattered, may still take root,
A fragile hope in a world of soot.
The strings now wail, the hymn is done,
A mother’s lullaby beneath the sun.

The mirror water, smooth and wide,
Reflects the soul I’ve set aside.
My hair, like tendrils, floats and trails;
The ripples grow, the weight unveils.

Pure, at last, the guilt does fade,
A shadow now where sorrow stayed.
Depression lingers—a faithful shade,
Guardian of all the vows unmade.

Don’t look back—his eyes are mine,
Vacant, lost, a shared design.
The ****** weeps her crimson thread,
A river carved through the still, the dead.

Smoke ascends where wars still rage,
A fog that blurs the infant page.
Unborn eyes accuse, demand,
Yet ghosts remain with stilled, grave hands.

I seek, I bleed, disciple torn,
Haunted by truths both sharp and worn.
The quiet watches, soft and grim;
No judgment passed, no prayer, no hymn.