the taste of sleeping pill ringing clear and bitter at the transition between mouth and throat
so different from the taste of sleep

This is the castle in the sky, the other side of the hill
This is barred windows and a barbed-wire fence that dwarfs even the sun
This is the ill-fated watchtower: a mystery until it wasn’t

I never wanted to know the smell of bone so intimately
(any chance we’d ever had was poisoned from the start)
Anger, anger, anger - it coats these walls like pitch
(it should’ve worked, I swear it should’ve worked)
Goose-flesh tears so easily but it scars into stone (it melts even easier, but then turns to lava)

I never would’ve believed that God himself lived in cobwebbed corners (wasted my whole life praying to the patron saint of carrying on)
I never would’ve believed that I could physically hunger for light
(we slept in tents and built the walls that would hold us captive)

I should be mourning the days I meandered away