No matter where I turn, you pull me in
A black hole wrapped in flawless skin.
Your face, a scripture I must recite,
Carved in the dark of my sleepless nights.

My heart is a beast with claws of need,
Thrashing, ravenous, starved for your lead.
When you're near, I cease to be,
A breath held tight, a wound set free.

When you are gone, you are never gone.
You stain the air, you stretch the dawn.
I see you lurking in glass and steam,
Flickering, shifting, slipping between.

I know your steps, your fleeting trace,
The ghosts you leave in empty space.
You do not see me, but I see you,
Devotion stitched in every view.

Call it hunger, call it fate,
A madness I do not wish to escape.
You are the altar, the prayer, the key
And I am the shadow that will not leave.

Lying in sorrow on the billet you claimed,
Weeping till dawn while the heavens lay maimed.
No roof to soften the rain’s cruel descent,
No peace for a heart that breaks in lament.

Footsteps still echo in halls lined with ghosts,
Names etched in silence where memory roams.
The war took its due, but left me behind,
Bound to the echoes you carved in my mind.

Detrimental to my skin are the caged beaks,
clawing from beneath, scratching bruises
in shades only I can feel.
My overgrown feathers wrap around me,
a shroud and a shield—
enough to hold me, yet never enough to choke.

If only they would.
If only they’d cover me whole,
cocoon me in darkness
until I am nothing but breathless night.

But instead, I find myself longing to be suffocated,
not by this cold weight but by soft hyacinths,
their petals brushing my feet,
closing around me like a final kiss from the earth.

Let them rise, lilac and violet,
fragrant like memories—
until I am overcome, gently,
by something that wants to hold,
not harm, as I do.

I recognized it—that other soul was yours, dipping near mine,
Rare like the moments when stars brush the earth.

I’ve taken you into me, as much mine as my own skin,
You breathe with the glimmer of a falling star.

You brushed the earth once more in your quiet brilliance—
Such a constellation you are to me, and more.

Born quick-witted, but now too tired to speak,
This world drags me down into silence so deep.
The people, their words, like soil in my veins,
Until I couldn’t breathe, now I just feel the chains.
I sink into bed, a prisoner to the voices,
No escape, no choices.

I once begged the sun to tear through the night,
But even that struggle feels too far from sight.
Once a typhoon, I raged, I drowned in its form,
Now the rain softly falls, dulled and worn.
It seeps into my skin, a quiet decay,
Lingering forever, with nothing left to say.

My perfect face, my perfect form,
It’s been some time since you crossed my mind.
My perfect eyes roam, longing for features that will never be mine,
Yet I am not sad; I carry the essence of my kind.

I wish I didn’t dwell, though I was sailing well on this rocking ship.
My mirror lies beside me, a truth I yearn to eclipse.
I could seize it now, as effortless as dispersing a speck of dust.

My perfect face, my perfect form become what I wish,
I hate to love you and ache for your kiss, but...