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furnace & flesh

by jack-jenkins

i was born in the burn 1995 flame, a war within ghosts pacing the halls before i ever knew how to carry a name or lie like a man i learned young how to build a face that people could love so they would never look past it that mask fit too well i forgot what skin felt like my fathers sins were seeds in my blood planted in silence harvested in screams behind walls that cracked before i could fix them i swore i wouldnt become him i didnt i became the fallout theres a psalm in my right hand a loaded habit in my left and every prayer tastes like rust now i say the right words sometimes other times i just stare at the ceiling and wait for the judgment or the mercy whichever lands first i still see her, my friend ten years gone and somehow still closer than God some days i carry her like a debt that never stops charging interest my faith is a battlefield where angels bleed in silence and demons grin in old familiar faces mostly mine twisted mines i drop my values like broken weapons pick them up again pretend theyre clean pretend im clean but ive counted the weight of my deeds on both sides of the scale and even if it tips my way i know thats not how grace works thats just math and math wont save me ive stopped praying to be perfect i just beg to be real i still want to be holy but God i dont know how to stop being me long enough to let You in if theres mercy if theres still blood on the altar for the hypocrite if grace can bleed this deep then let it bleed ive traveled so far to be here again maybe crawling back is the only kind of worship ive ever truly known
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Written by
jack-jenkins
30 / M
For You?
Written by
jack-jenkins
30 / M
Published
Jul 11, 2025
Time
4m
Notes

I've forgotten how to be me.

And I've forgotten how not to be me.

The version of myself that walks and speaks and sins

it's not the man I want to be.

But the man I want to be feels lost in smoke,

somewhere between the psalms I used to pray

and the faces I've learned to wear.

So I ask myself:

If I exorcise who I've become,

who's left standing?

Maybe no one.

Maybe just a shell,

burnt on the outside,

still bleeding on the inside.

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