FionaFirst to rec
“I was never chosen for belonging.
Not by the world, not by blood, not by any hand that ever touched me.
I walk among the living as an exile,
a phantom dressed in flesh,
a vessel meant only to pour itself empty
so others may drink and leave.
I am the altar and the offering.
I tear my own spine into kindling,
set myself ablaze just to keep their shadows warm.
I hand over my ruin as though it were holy bread,
because if love will not have me,
perhaps sacrifice will.
And pain;
pain has been my only covenant.
It baptized me.
It married me.
It crowns me each morning with thorns
and cradles me each night in its iron womb.
It is not a wound; it is my inheritance.
It is not a visitor; it is my god.
Yet still;
there is a howl in me.
A storm that wants to rip heaven in half.
I want to pound my fists against the firmament
until the stars rain down like glass.
I want the earth to feel the shudder of my grief,
to know that I am here,
bleeding, burning, begging..
and no one sees me.
But I know the sentence.
They will spit their verdicts like venom.
“Attention seeker.”
“Coward.”
“Spectacle.”
They will say despair is a theater,
agony a mask,
death a performance.
So I swallow the scream.
I choke on silence until it poisons me.
And I rot.
I rot in daylight,
smiling with dead teeth,
while my insides collapse like a set on fire.
Tell me,
when does it end?
When does this body, this prison,
finally crack open?
When will my lungs sigh their last,
my skull quiet itself,
my eyes close not in weariness
but in deliverance?
I curse the sleepers in their graves.
I envy their soil, their silence, their eternal stillness.
I despise their peace even as I crave it.
Why should they rest while I remain chained,
dragging myself through the days like carrion?
I am tired.
Tired of this cursed breath,
this endless theater of pain.
I have known nothing but wounds,
and I desire nothing but the abyss.
If there is a god,
let him hear me.
If there is a hell,
let it open now.
If there is mercy in this universe,
let it be the mercy of oblivion.
Because I am finished.
And all I have ever loved,
all I have ever trusted,
all I have ever worshiped,
is pain.”
