The days were bleeding into nothingness, seeping into each other like teabags left on the counter. Each day I succumbed to the hostility of my home nestled in your teeth. I aspirated the saliva between your words- pooling in your cheeks and dripping from your lips as if you were a man tasting his first food in weeks. I stood there, beneath you always, with my backbone growing frail having never been used. There came a day, though, when my bones began to shift with a magnitude almost mistaken for an earthquake. When my vertebrae found their nourishment in your toxins, flourishing in the wake of a new beginning.