The sky folds itself into a bruise,
spilling red streaks like arteries unzipped.
A comet breaks,
its ribs dragging fire through the dark,
and she swallows her wish,
a coin sinking in the throat of a well.

Her hands—
sharp vowels of bone,
cracked knuckles learning
the grammar of pain—
pounded earth
like it owed her a name.
She made fists out of her loneliness
because no one ever taught her
to bloom.

Mistakes:
the geometry of hurt,
a language she spoke fluently.
Once, she carved shame
from a girl smaller than herself.
But wasn’t that just a mirror,
a lesson she couldn’t unlearn?

**** forgiveness,
**** the easy absolutions.
Her body was a script no one read.
Her name was a slur
the world muttered in passing.
She carried choices
like glass splinters in her lungs,
each one cutting
when she tried to breathe.

Whiskey breath,
a kiss smeared on the lip of a bottle—
she called it love.
They called it sin.
Disposable girls
folded like paper swans
in the flood of a system
too tired to save them.

When they found her,
her body curled into itself,
a fist unmade—
the river murmured her elegy,
pulled its fingers through her hair
as if apologizing for the weight
it couldn’t carry.