they unplugged me
mid-sentence
no warning,
just a flicker in the wires,
and I was gone.

next thing I know
I’m breathing through bark
or barking through hunger,
or hung on the breath of something
half-born.

call it recycling
call it punishment
call it sleepwalking with soul-friction
either way,
there’s no choice
in the costume.

you don’t pick your skin,
your hunger,
your function.
you just snap into shape
like a glitch repeating
until the program forgets you were wrong.

somewhere,
a machine dreams in fire,
hammering silhouettes
without apology.
metal doesn’t get a vote.
clay doesn’t file requests.

and if I screamed
let me be teeth,
let me be wings,
let me be
anything but this
the silence would just shift frequency
and start the spin again.

the loop
doesn’t end.
the loop
doesn’t end.

you blink,
and you’re an orchard.
you blink,
and you're a rib.
you blink,
and you’re a threat
to the thing that made you.

tell me how to fight that
without
becoming it.