Green,  I drank it. Hate, it stood  (2025)

 

I have known dread.

It was a house built of brittle hands, neurotic minds, 

stacked high as if it’s looming could make it whole.

It caved inward slow as a last breath,

pressed me flat beneath the beams, wood splintered in my teeth,

a rotting cherry pit clenched in my fist.

 

I have known fear.

A thing that nested between the ribs,

slipped cold through the hollow of my throat.

It hummed soft as a struck match,

rose quick as a hand—

Strike, flinch, repent, but the clinging stayed. 

I woke with it, I slept with it,

a hush, a shudder that creeps and preys.

 

And jealousy—

jealousy is green.

Scheele’s green, absinthine green,

poison poured into porcelain cups.

All the ways I'll never be enough

Seeped deep into my bloodstream as,

I drank it. I drank it. 

It stained the cracks as it turned my insides new shades of verdant ruin.

 

And hate—oh, hate was easy.

Hate had hands, hate had abscessed teeth.

It was a dog at my heel, eager and wet-mouthed, bulging eyes, gleaming and stupid.

The repugnance of raw meat and uncontained violence— it cannot confuse itself for anything else.

It stood, it stood, it stood.

 

But joy? O joy—

Joy is the birth of something wet and wailing,

a thing so pink, so warm, so full of light—

until it withers in the cradle.

It sours from incessant heat like curdled milk,

it wrings itself empty and drips through the slats.

I held it once, I swear I did, but I must have choked it, clasped onto it too tightly

For it bled like a cut pear,

left nothing but the seed for next time. 

 

And love—

a word stretched thin as lace,

passes between hands until the edges fray.

I found it once in old photographs,

Profound and ancient, 

In lockets clasped, 

But it peeled away in the morning light,

a mirage, a dream, a flooded fleeting thing. 

 

~Yet dread remains where love has left,

a foundation built of hollow bone

And fear, once known, will never leave,

a damp that clings beneath the stone ~

 

I know it’s a shame—

to take a thing, so labyrinthine,

So dark and bare 

And wrap it in your heart strings

So you have no space for air,

 

But to watch it consume me

In all its glory, to lay me down 

and turn me out,

Climbing up and crawling through me

Sends me to a space devout,

 

Where I no longer 

see the space between, 

The borders of me, of it, of us,

I crave to dissipate, dissolve inside it,

To let it turn me into rot,

 

And by now, I do not fight.

 

I part my lips, let ruin in,

Let it press its mouth to mine,

Let it slip between my ribs,

Cast its thorns

Straight through my spine.

 

I bare my throat 

to the hands that made me,

spread myself, an altar wide

and whisper softly in its ear, 

I’ll lay down by your side.

 

I’ll move for you—

As puppets do

In hot ungodly ways,

Let you cast your sins on me

And use me for your play. 

 

I’ll let you fill 

My hollow husk 

With venom from your fangs,

Then I’ll bite for you and kill for you

And always take the blame. 

 

I fear the light 

The shrinking blight 

Because all good things must change.

Entropy, decay, and grief

Will always have their place. 

 

~~A wall with no cracks, a facade never worn, is closer to chaos than the neighbors it scorns,

 

and goodness is lukewarm and light.