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Jul 10
Does ink bleed from the soul
because pain must be visible to heal?
Does the paper thirst for our unsaid grief,
drinking the silence until it learns to scream,
until even truth finds a shape it can wear?

Do thoughts fall like rain
through cathedral bones of the chest,
trickling down spires of breath and shadow?
Are they secret droplets distilled
in the vaulted silence beneath our sternum,
where old prayers and animal cries sleep?

Do naked vowels kiss the endless void
just to feel less alone in the dark?
Is that why words at time stumble and weep?

Is the flesh of thought meant to tear—
to be stitched to stanzas, raw and exposed,
heartbeat after heartbeat breaking in ink?
Are we the page,
or the wound,
or the trembling hand that writes?

— But tell me, then —
if the storm finds its voice in a quiet pen,
and lightning can be made of words,
what gods are we calling
when buried aches take flight?

What burns in the metaphor’s molten wings
when the sky itself must blister with truth?
Do we write to release,
or to be seen
before we vanish?
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
The Pen Is a Mouth
Malcolm
Written by
Malcolm  40/M
(40/M)   
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