Sparkless grit presses under frostbit knuckles not fire, just the idea of heat with its eyes shut.
I rest in the draftwork of holding patterns, where clocks twitch but never commit.
Once weather scored graffiti down my backframe, like a vandal too polite to leave a name. Now breath limps blurred, rattling through cracked syllables that don’t know what they’re naming.
Tannin hums behind the teeth, coiled like a riddle no tongue can unwrap.
Velvet cords grip the throat not tightly, just enough to remind me I'm still leased to something unseen.
The wind tastes like rusted lemon split skin, unbitten seconds, ticking in citrus static.
I’m a jar glaze peeled, rim chipped, still ringing from hands that shaped and fled.
Then comes not-morning just the choreographed blur of cloth and chrome, rituals that shine but don’t touch.
Time turns its crank. I nod. I click. I vanish for the hours.
And the dark? It unbuttons itself with fluent decay. It wades in, speaks in steam, and folds me into its absence not to ****, but to remember me the way embers remember what they could have burned.
I wait for endlessness, or whatever arrives five seconds too late