I name the sky
but not the ceiling
The walls comply
without revealing

A maze of flesh
worn to coping
False gods enmesh
the soul in hoping

I woke too late
to heed the charm
This woven state—
a false alarm

I held the lie
like a child holds breath
Afraid to cry,
afraid of death

A child no more
but not yet formed
A half-closed door
by silence warmed

I mimic grace
with borrowed limbs
A haunted face
beneath the hymns

Not quite awake
yet never dreaming
The seams all ache
from constant seeming

And if I scream—
does it resound?
Or just a dream
that makes no sound?

Beneath the breath
a stillness waits
A second death
with no clean gates

The body hums
its loaded prayer
But all becomes
a vacant stare

Syntax frays
beneath the thought
What god obeys
the self I’m not?

I claw through names
but none will stay
Each shape reclaims
then rots away

The self, a gloss
on leaking form
A dream of loss
pretending norm

No center holds—
it never did
Just nested folds
of what I hid

No I. No you.
No real disguise.
Just tunnels through
abandoned skies

The witness breathes
without a lung
No scripts, no sheaths
No native tongue

It does not choose
or seek reply
It does not lose
It does not die

Not bound by pain
yet made of pain
Not lost, not sane—
not mind, not brain

It watched me be
then watched me break
It was not me—
but stayed awake

A hollow hush
beneath all sound
A pulse, a crush
not outer-bound

Throughout it all
I exist
A novel fall
Lines betwixt

Animals, a sea adrift
Feeding on the cheapest rift
A pattern to be missed
when rhymes end in a weak fit