The Architecture of Contempt in I Kept the Pieces That Hurt the Most

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.