I will call you kindness
For you loved me the way
a crow loves murder.
Like a battlefield loved
the blood of a young boy.
And forgive me,
I want my anger to rise
And swallow you
Like the ancient fire that
kissed the hair of a young witch.
But my throat is closed.
My fangs are melted.
Am nothing.
Still, I whisper your name
into spoons of boiling rice,
hoping steam will rewrite
what silence refused to say.
I carve you into candle wax
and let the flame disfigure it—
again, again, again—
until it looks like a mercy
I never received.
I braid your absence
into the bedsheet’s edge,
like a mother sews
her dead child's buttons
into a new coat—
not to remember,
but to touch.
I will call you kindness
until the word
begins to choke.
Until it blisters in my throat
and bleeds down my ribs
as apology.
And then I will disappear,
for the memory of your voice
makes everything else ugly.


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