I touch things I’m not supposed to and call it prayer. mouth open, spine bent, tongue tasting the fence line.
They say longing is holy if it stays quiet, but mine doesn’t— mine breaks the jar and drinks the oil.
They told me I was an open wound, festering with verse and girlhood. They weren’t wrong. But wrong feels a lot like worship when done slow enough.
They say impure like it’s a curse, but all my favorite girls are made of swampwater and sin.
I’ve never confessed without turning it into performance. My mouth was built for poetry and plea deals.
I was thirteen when I learned to ache without making a sound. Seventeen when I turned it into scripture. Twenty-five when I realized no one was coming to carry the body but me.
I keep trying to write the right-sized truth but it never fits in a single poem or apology.
I want back the girl who ran barefoot into fire because she believed it might be heaven.
I want someone to touch me like I’m soft— even if I’m not. Even if I bite back.
I want to grab without apologizing for how hot my hands are. I want someone to look at me like a threat they’d die for.
I want the kind of love that makes funerals nervous. I want to be written about by someone who isn’t me.
And I want to want less. But I don’t.
You want a softer girl? Tell that to the altar I keep burying her under.