Ink And Reason

I carved stones from the breath of my palms,
not stones, but murmurs hardened into edges,
a tower stitched from the thread of whispers,
its steepness a dream that forgets to wake.

She handed me her trust—a flame 
trembling inside a fist of glass,
and I walked with it, blind, 
through the underbelly of stars,
my shadow growing heavier than my skin.

The heart, a clock with teeth of iron,
gnawed at the gold of her gaze,
spit it out as ash, as wind without a name.
I climbed toward the peak of myself,
and the higher I rose, the louder 
the storm I birthed in my bones.

Her faith was a mirror, not flat, 
but a river bending toward me,
showing a man who swallowed light 
and coughed up splinters.
My hands—traitors with no country—clawed at the air, 
broke what they touched,
shattered the bridge I never meant to cross.

It repeats, a song scratched into my marrow,
a seam that splits when the sun dares to linger.
When spring arrives, I am its thief,
plucking petals to bury under frost.

Now I sit, a king of crumbs,
throned on the rubble of my own hands,
a kingdom where echoes rule,
where love’s shadow paces, caged.
What lives in me that dreads the warmth,
that plants thorns in the cradle of a touch?

Yet—listen—a spark hums,
a match struck against the wet tongue of rain,
a stubborn ember that refuses to drown.
Perhaps the mason of collapse,
this fool of unbuilt walls,
might knead the dust into a quiet house,
a place where trust grows still,
like a stone that learns to sing.