there is a temple of iron and glass,
its doors gaping like a beast’s maw,
breathing in disciples,
spitting them out sculpted, shining, sure.
it hums in my ribs,
soft at first, then a roar, then a tremor that unroots me.

i do not enter.

instead, i map myself in the mirror,
fingertips skimming over fault lines,
skin stretched over the wreckage of someone else's war.

i am a house that has been broken into,
windows rattling at the memory of hands
that turned me into something hollow.

they say to run,
but my legs remember pursuit.
they say to lift,
but my shoulders recall the weight of silence.
they say to push, pull, press, forge myself into more —
but all i hear is
small, smaller, gone.

inside, the air is thick,
a storm of clashing metal and breath
from giants who have never learned to fear themselves.
but i am made of glass,
fractured and fogged,
a shape too fragile to shatter again.

they say strength is safety.
but strong was never safe.
strong was fists, voices raised, doors torn from hinges.
strong meant surviving,
but never stopping.
strong meant something was always coming.
strong was never mine.

so i walk past.

i keep my hands buried in the fabric of my sleeves,
let the night swallow me whole,
tell myself tomorrow.

tomorrow, maybe.

but tonight,
i let the ghosts win.