Hate is the seed I never planted-
yet here it blooms, obscene and towering,
a night blooming wound splitting the soil
of my chest.
Its petals reek of iron and old apologies.
I tell myself its weather,
a passing storm lodged in the skull,
but it has grown tendrils,
creeping through the rafters of thought,
wrapping each memory until it chokes.
By afternoon it gnaws the light to ribbons.
The air goes bruise dark;
even the clock hands flinch.
I drag myself from room to room
like a corpse deciding where to lie.
No one sees the black root twisting up my throat,
the way it opens my voice like a hinge
and speaks in me, through me, for me
with that cold mother-tongue
of ruin.
At night it feeds-
chewing the soft edges of hope,
licking the bones clean
until the hours rattle.
I dream I cut it out
I dream the soil of my body collapses
and the thing with my name on it
finally starves.
But every morning it wakes first,
slick and alive,
pressing its shadow against mine -
the only companion
I can't bury.