I do not wear the brightest colors
they blister on me like false hallelujahs,
like hymns sung by mouths that never tasted ash.
Red is a lie. Yellow screams.
I was meant for grey
for the shade that lives between smoke and surrender.

I hate the sun
its gold teeth, its cruel spotlight.
It peels me open like fruit left out too long.
Give me the sky when it's weeping,
when it folds in on itself like grief
tucked beneath an old coat.

Sweet coffee tastes like apology.
I drink it black
like a widow’s veil,
like ink spilled on a suicide note.
I want the bitterness to bite,
to remind me that even silence can scald.

Joy is foreign
a costume that fits someone else’s ghost.
When I laugh, it echoes wrong,
as if joy is borrowing my voice
and not returning it.
I was stitched from thunderclouds,
from cellar air and moth wings.

I do not like people.
Their voices swarm like flies
around the fruit I’ve already thrown out.
Their love is too loud, too pink.
I crave solitude the sharp knife of it,
clean, precise, and without perfume.