Fin

I was birthed from the torn stomach of night,

drenched not in milk,

but in the black bile of forgotten prayers.

The world spat me out

as a creature too ruined to be loved,

a wound with legs,

a scream with teeth.

Hope;

was a bone thrown to a starving dog.

I gnawed it until my mouth filled with splinters,

bled until my tongue knew only the taste

of broken promises.

I grew eating hunger,

drinking the venom of people's hate,

wearing the bruises of their disgust

like a second, rotting skin.

The colour of my flesh...

an open invitation to cruelty,

a crime I could never peel from my bones.

And when I crawled through the sewage of my years,

a thing barely breathing,

I thought love would be the knife to cut me free.

Instead,

it was another dagger...

this one twisted slowly into my throat

while I watched her eyes,

soft and shining,

for someone else.

Tell me, God,

what is more merciful:

to be born blind to love,

or to be shown its light

only to have it ripped from your hands

by fingers colder than the grave?

If there is a God of agony,

He carved His name into my ribs with rusted nails,

He strung my tendons into a lyre

so He could pluck songs of suffering

from my every step.

At night, I lie rotting,

a feast for the worms of memory,

as my dreams decompose around me,

the stench of what might have been,

thick enough to choke a corpse.

I feel decay threading through my blood,

I hear my hope

crackling like dry leaves under the boots

of things that never loved me.

My soul,

no, not even a soul,

a shattered lantern,

spilling its last flicker into a pit

where even maggots refuse to crawl.

And still,

some putrid, twitching part of me

reaches out,

fingers broken and blackened,

begging the silent stars

for something,

anything,

that does not end

in rot.

-Cyrus K.

I am not trapped.

I am abandoned.

There is no fight left in my limbs

no fire left in my chest

Only the heavy, sinking knowledge

that I have lived too long

in a body that was never mine to keep.

I do not recognize this face

these hands,

this voice that cracks like old pavement

every time I try to speak

I used to scream for help.

Now I don’t even bother whispering

No one listens to a woman

who dug her own grave.

We scroll past

starving children

to buy shoes we don’t need

and call it life.

Babies are born

with lungs full of poison,

their bodies warped

by toxins we dumped for profit.

Mothers wrap sons

in flags

like it softens

the sound of a coffin closing.

We skin the earth

for gold and oil

and hang it on our necks

while forests burn

and oceans bleed.

We worship Gods

but not Their creation.

Pray louder

than we love.

Animals scream in silence.

Children rot in camps.

Water is sold.

Air is dying.

Truth is filtered.

Kindness forgotten.

We kill over dirt

though we are made of stars.

We hoard

while others die thirsty.

This is not a world,

it is a graveyard

we are still digging

with our eyes wide open.

-Cyrus K.

“I choose to love you in silence because in silence I find no rejection, and in silence no one owns you but me.”

— Rumi

I do not believe there is a more dangerous and destructive force in all the world than hope, but I do not believe there is a more necessary or perfectly beautiful one either.

Tyler Knott Gregson

I was the moth.

Not blind,

but aching.

I was not deceived by the flame,

I longed for its ruin.

To be undone in that heat,

to burn knowing,

was a worship beyond reason.

A thousand lifetimes in darkness

could never equal

one death

in such light.

-Cyrus K.

“It’s amazing how much damage can be done when you have nothing but good intentions.”

— Tom Marin

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.”

— Og Mandino