I do not know your name—
only your silhouette
etched in the echo of things I was not given.
Your absence was my alphabet.
I spelled every woman with your ghost.


They loved me.
But I loved you through them.
Your hands behind their voices.
Your eyes haunting their praise.
They were flesh, and I was kneeling.


I made gods of strangers.
I made homes of hunger.


Mother—not mother.
Lover—not lover.
I could not hold the difference.
They all became symbols
and I became a shrinekeeper,
tending lies with tenderness.


Forgive me,
those I touched but never saw.
I was trying to reach through you
and forgot you were not them.
And they were not you.
None of you asked for this altar.


I am dismantling the myth.
I am returning the light.

They say I slept like  
I was in a shallow grave,
Still warm, but rigid.
eyes glazed over..

I tried to wake myself up,
But as I looked down,
Chills evaporated through me.

I slept like death, my pillow
A grave stone of dreams.
Tucked in beneath the
Shallow entombment
of slumber.

Yet, upon my resurrection,
I feel like I’d never even
Sewn my eyes shut.
As sunlight seers my retina.

I walk into the light, dead on my feet..

When you hold up a heart
you hold up the world. 🌎💗


SoulSurvivor
2022