She bites the pomegranate—
not with hunger,
but with a soft kind of ache,
like remembering a song too late at night.

Juice ribbons down her wrist
in rivulets of rubies,
sanguine silk,
each seed a small beating heart
she swore she’d never swallow.

The orchard hums—
a low, bone-deep thrum of honey-thick dusk,
where shadows sleep in the eyes of foxes,
and the air tastes like cinnamon secrets.

There is gravity in sweetness,
a tug between teeth and truth.
She thinks: love is a fruit with a rind too thin to protect it
and eats anyway.

Inside her chest:
a garden blooming in reverse—
petals folding,
color bleeding into absence,
the sound of something unripening.

She is full now—
of myth, of molten memory,
of something holy and ruinous.
She smiles,
and the world forgets
what season it is.

the day I lose feeling
will not come softly.

it will arrive in a hush—
not a peaceful one,
but the kind that devours echoes
and drapes the bones in frost.

I will no longer know the sting
of sunburned sorrow,
nor the hush of a warm hand
brushing the tears off my cheek.

no more trembling
under a thunder-skied guilt,
no more gasping at poems
that bleed with someone else’s grief—
I will be blank.

a shell left in the wake of a tide,
where even the salt forgets
the memory of waves.

how cruel,
to be untouched by ache or awe.
to no longer cry
at the sight of spilled light
on cold pavement at dusk—
to not care
how a crow calls at dusk
with a voice like cracked obsidian.

when I can no longer feel,
do not call it numb.
call it death.
call it
gone.

and when you find my name
beneath dust
in a book no one reads anymore,
know that once,
I was fire.
and it took the whole night sky
to put me out.

I cradle aches
like heirlooms—
not mine,
but remembered

deep in the joints of memory,
where silence once slept
in rooms with hollow lullabies.

I press cool cloths
to fevered skin
with hands that once reached
into shadow
and came back empty.

Now they are full—
of bandages,
of borrowed grace,
of tenderness sewn like stars
into every rough seam.

I stir soup
as if it were a spell,
watching steam rise
like ghosts of things
I used to need:

a steady voice,
a soft no,
arms that didn’t shake.

To care
is to time-travel—
to give the child inside me
what she never received
by giving it
to someone else.

Each thank you
is a stitch
in the tear I carry.

Each healed wound
in another
is a whisper to mine:
you’re not forgotten.

Love is not red,
but a bluish sheen
like frost clinging to the edges of a withered petal—
quiet, delicate, grieving.

It echoes in rooms I’ve never stood in
but dreamt of dying in softly—
your name still caught in the lace of my breath.
Like spiderwebs in moonlight:
beautiful, invisible, breaking.

My ribs are glass when you smile.
Does that make you cruel, or does it make me fragile?
Tears hang like pearls in my lungs,
and I drown with grace.
(Love shouldn’t feel this much like drowning.)

The stars blink down with pity—
each one a slow, silver eyelash
shedding light on how I’m
held together by hurt and hope, both trembling.

You pressed your warmth
into my winter skin
and now I shiver even in summer,
missing a fire I can’t carry.
You made my heart grow teeth,
then kissed it with silence.

And it weeps,
not because you left—
but because you stayed long enough
to teach it how to ache with elegance.

the wind no longer bites,
no voices call her name,
just the soft hush of rain
kissing the earth
where she once stood.

the ache,
the ever-splintering ache,
has grown quiet—
not from healing,
but from letting go.

she does not cry anymore.
not because she is numb—
but because she is free.
freer than the clouds
that used to pass her by.

bones unclench,
heart unhooks,
lungs forget the weight of air.

no more needles
in the chest of morning.
no more claws
in the gut of night.

her soul, a silver thread,
slips through the seams
of a worn-out sky,
and drifts.

it is peaceful here.
quiet, yes.
but not empty.

those who love her
will ache—
but only because she loved so deeply.
and now,
she rests.

hush—
let her rest.