A house after the fire;
all blackened beams,
hollow rooms,
the smell of something ruined
still clinging to the walls.
That is what remains.
There is a voice that lives beneath my ribs,
a patient executioner,
sharpening every memory
into a blade.
It knows where to cut.
It takes my smallest failures
and hangs them from the ceiling like chandeliers,
so I must live beneath their glow,
watching them sway in every passing draft.
I have become an expert
in turning mirrors into weapons.
Every reflection returns with interest:
another flaw,
another fracture,
another reason to disappear.
Some nights I imagine peeling myself apart
like old paint from a rotting door,
searching for something worth saving underneath.
But all I find
are ghosts wearing my face.
And still the morning comes,
dragging its pale light across the floor,
forcing me to witness
what remains.
A ruin.
A witness.
A wound that learned to walk.
And yet,
even hatred grows tired.
Even darkness forgets its own name.
Somewhere beneath the ash,
beneath the wreckage,
beneath the relentless machinery of contempt,
a single stubborn ember refuses to die.
I despise it for surviving.
It survives anyway.
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