The Worship:
your scent – sickly, golden myrrh
festers in my lungs.
the church holds its breath
but incense lingers like sin –
i gave you all.
i swallowed your golden bones,
sipped the constellations from your gaze,
bathed in rivers beneath your skin.
/
once, when fate still prowled the land
when ocean and lightning still made love,
i was holy in your lands.
now thorns crown me – bleeding,
unbeautiful.
honey drips from your fanged lips –
you bit till i bruised,
you bit until i bled pain.
(the body convulses –
my lungs beg.
my blood heaves.
may it all burn.)
⸻
The Desecration:
a starving god licks your lips,
drunk on the silence.
he feasts on marrow,
makes altar girls of us all.
a soft-boned graveyard,
kneeling with gritted teeth,
bleeding hymns from split throats.
tell me –
when i bathed your feet
was it enough?
would saltwater –
the sting of it all,
make you crave me more?
(will this sanctify me? /
cleanse me of all i am?)
when brutus kissed caesar’s bloodless cheek,
did the mask slip?
did gold shatter like tears from his robe?
power coiled tight
around the lamb’s throat.
sobs echo off the tomb’s stone walls –
they have no time to listen
to a traitor’s regret.
(let the fires find him –
let the gods pay penance.
may the floods make prophets of us all)
⸻
The Drowning:
you haunt the tidepool of thoughts,
glimpses, shadows,
salt-rimmed ghost.
saint anthony watches,
smoke dancing out his rosebud mouth.
he cannot return what i never truly lost.
i will stake this stitched heart
with my own cursed hands
before i breathe you in again.
i would’ve been the trembling breath
beneath your very skin,
only just close enough to love you.
i would’ve been the dark water –
ebbing,
flowing,
swallowing your skimming stones.
(oh – to be the ground that bore you
when nothing else could)
ash falls from your liar’s lips
like something i once trusted.
i’d rip my ribcage open
to feel your warmth settle within.
(a wolf wearing lover’s skin)
⸻
The Phoenix:
you looked at me
and i was aflame.
but god –
it should’ve been you
on the pyre,
and i should’ve lit the match.
⸻
Milk Teeth, Fractured Jaw
i dragged God into the interview room
on a Tuesday that hummed with rot.
car horns screeched their prayers,
into deaf heavens.
rain gnawed against the misty glass
conspiring
threatening
cursing.
he sipped his watery instant coffee,
bitter penance slipped down his throat.
still, he couldn’t meet my eyes.
‘tell me why?’
my voice –
a sick confession
to a burning altar.
my ribs – the serpent’s cradle.
the venom swirls –
ravaging
unmaking.
blood pools at my fanged mouth.
forgiveness has never been mine to offer
not with preacher’s hands
soft from gentle mercy.
he meets my blistering gaze –
unbothered
unafraid.
my body a constellation
of collapsing sins.
dragging guilt
forcing blame.
the moon waits on my shoulder –
she knows better
than to plead
with what is already aflame.
‘why not?
you built this fire’
he breathes, unburdened
divinity echoes in his freedom.
a halo splits clean above us.
the hosts of angels avert their gaze –
nothing is sacred enough to be saved.
the weight of ancestral blood
stains my flesh.
a storm of bone and breath –
what i was made to carry,
promises violence under the fluorescent lights.
regret too heavy
for brittle veins to bear.
oceanic wrath –
the tide breaks behind my eyes.
the waves pound,
begging for relief,
begging for vengeance.
searching
searching the deity before me.
evidence of my creation
scrubbed from this earth.
i am the ink stain in their holy book.
they whisper in hushed tones,
beneath great church bells –
robes rustle like guilt in corridors.
i scream at sacred cords
strangling my sinner’s throat.
i will swallow my heart
and make god watch.
blame curls into a corner
in a candlelit cell.
it knows what you did.
gnashing teeth, trembling hands –
open wide, sweet child.
choke –
on all i am.
all i will ever be.
sugary rot clings to your teeth.
i suffocate,
i suffocate.