Stately, headless form,
profound with life, she endures—
stone defies time's hand.

Pregnant with the stars,
prosperity flows through her,
silent, yet so vast.

Temple's sacred core,
sea and stars weave her wisdom—
eternal she stands.

She puked the night onto the trembling pavement,

a bitter river, spilling the weight of stars.

The waves whispered, soft and endless, to her ear,

Their rhythm not unlike his voice—low, insincere.

She let them take her, a shadow slipping from the shore,

No rage, no plea; she was past the point of more.

Drowning felt gentle—his absence had hurt far more.

The air shimmered, alive with its own trembling pulse,
and I felt—yes, I felt—the veil tear, thin as gossamer,
wet with dew and dreams.
The mushrooms, small and unassuming, lay in my palm
like a secret too heavy for words.
I ate them,
and the world unfolded,
petal by petal,
a flower blooming backward into itself.

It was not the self I sought—
not at first.
No, it was the taste,
the salt of knowing that clung to my tongue,
sharp and metallic,
like the tang of stars fallen into the sea.
The ground, steady and loyal all my life,
buckled and sighed,
and I slipped,
I drowned—
oh, willingly I drowned!—
into the land of fevered dreams,
where shadows wear faces
and light bends to its own whims.

The Self—what is it but a vapor,
a mist rolling out to sea,
always receding,
always somewhere else?
I reached for it—
a hand outstretched, trembling,
fingers brushing its edge—
but it dissolved,
scattering into the sky,
a thousand tiny stars.
"Come," said the stars,
each one a voice,
each one a wound.

Time folded in on itself,
its moments dripping like candle wax,
melting, melting—
and there was Truth,
naked as a child,
unflinching.
She beckoned,
her eyes sharp as glass,
her mouth full of salt.
"Do you dare?" she asked.
"Do you dare taste what cannot be untasted?"

And I—oh, I—
drank her down,
her bitterness, her fire,
until my tongue burned with her name.
What was the Self then,
but a shadow cast by flame?
A ghost dancing in the ash of knowing?

Still, I search.
Still, I wander beneath the sky,
its stars like open wounds,
its silence like a hymn.
And when I find myself—if I find myself—
will I recognize the face?
Or will I merely see
the salt-streaked reflection
of the sea I once drowned in?

Head bowed, she lingered in the doorway,
her shadow stretched like a sigh,
the child she once was slipping away,
a whisper unraveling in the dark.
She stood there, her silence heavy,
a stone dropped into the well of time.

Later, she lay naked,
her body a poem written on rags,
the stolen fabric of her dreams
stitched with the trembling light of stars.
Before her, the wall—
a blank canvas of memory,
white as the breath of the moon.

Her destiny was a gold thread,
meant to wind through the arms of a lover,
their limbs a forest of quiet promises.
The petals around them bled like hearts,
the leaves fell like old songs,
and time, that ghostly wind,
whispered them into stillness.

The demons came,
their wings dark as midnight oceans,
their voices soft as a lover’s hand.
But she stood, her heart
a blooming wound, her forgiveness
a river running deep beneath the earth.
She split herself open like fruit,
the seeds of her past scattering
into the soil of her new self.

She became fire,
a wild and untamed flame,
liquid heat coursing through her veins.
Her voice, once caged,
rose up, fierce and unashamed,
an echo that shook the sky.

She was a ruby falling,
a drop of blood into the abyss of sleep,
her footsteps dissolving into the earth.
Hope died quietly,
its wings clipped by the raven’s cry.
The world crashed around her,
its colors breaking like waves against the cliffs.
And still she stood,
her body the pulse of the universe,
her soul the ache of eternity.

Everything bleached—
the words, the memory of words,
the tongue flattened beneath the weight
of what must not be spoken. A surrender
of sound, a silence that tastes like salt
pressed into a wound
you forgot to name.

Here—
the iodine threads through the dirt—
it burns its way backward,
into a childhood—
is it mine? I do not know—
that never grew
out of its scabs, that curled itself
into a tight fist
of unhealed skin.

The razors, though—
they moved like swifts, like
unseen birds
cutting through the air
too fast to stop—
their kisses, their strange
geometry of ruin.

And the grown-ups, their words—
or were they storms?
or the echo of gods?—
"You must obey, or vanish.
You must obey, or
learn to die of shame."
And so—
the body folds itself inward,
like paper, like
a breath no one will miss.

Do you feel it?
The guilt—
its slender fingers
tightening, as if around
the throat of a world.
The shame—its small
knife-point etching
names you did not choose
into the chest.
The way the chest carries it—
silent, but
with the weight of centuries.

"Tell the story," they said.
"Make it better.
Make it sing." But
their mouths are full
of echo, their threats
like waves breaking
against a cliff you can’t stop
dreaming of.

I want to write the dirt.
The cuts.
The razors in their perfect arcs.
I want to write the gods
that were not gods, the voices
that were not mine.
The grace—
noose-like, tightening—
but not the gilded lie
of endings.

Instead, a fire:
its single purpose,
its clear burning.
Not to erase, but to
scar. To carve me
out of this
bleached photograph, this
ghost-sky still
blistering my hands.

Let it end in the crackle of ash,
the body emerging—
not whole, but here,
a scarred brightness walking
into the unfinished dawn.