Whispers

There is a garden inside me,

but it does not let me leave.

The hedges lean inward,

their thorns shifting to breathe against my skin.

Roots slide beneath the soil

to erase the proof I ever tried to escape.

Every path is a deception.

Turn left and the ground softens to swallow,

turn right and the air thickens

until I’m choking on the stench of flowers

that bloom only to conceal the exits,

snapping their black-veined petals shut

when my eyes linger too long.

In the undergrowth,

something with too many teeth

feasts on the bones of things I used to love.

The storm waits in silence.

It clings to the branches,

gathering weight,

breathing on the back of my neck.

It begins as a doubt,

a tremor in the chest,

then splits the sky until rain cuts like glass,

until mud grips my legs,

until I forget which way was forward

and which was home.

I have found gates before,

bars bleeding rust,

a gap just wide enough for hope to slip through.

But the vines are always faster.

They lash around my arms,

drive their thorns into my wrists,

and speak in the voice I keep buried in my skull:

Where could you possibly go?

No one is waiting.

From the outside,

it is beautiful,

walls of green, soft blossoms,

a carefully staged lie.

But inside, the walls shift when you blink,

and the only way to survive

is to stop believing in escape.

Would you fight for me, if the skies bled red?

If the stars went silent and the sun played dead?

If the heavens cracked and the light turned vile,

Would you walk through fire just to stay a while?

If the world turned cruel and the winds bit deep,

Would you hold the line while the lost ones weep?

Would you bear the dark, the dread, the cold,

Stand by my ruin, unshaken, bold?

I don’t want vows or silver lies,

Just a truth that scorches, that never dies.

So tell me now, don’t dress it sweet:

Would you fight for love

when it tastes like defeat?

Tear through fate with bloodied hands,

Break each chain the gods command?

Face the storm, the void, the flame,

drag me back, still screaming my name?

They say love fades, like breath in frost,

Would you chase me through all I lost?

Where time forgets and shadows sing,

Would you find me

where even death clings?

Don’t come soft. Don’t come clean.

Come raw, haunted, obscene, not love that bends to light,

I need the kind

that stays

when it bites.

In the quiet future,

when the house has learned to live without them,

the bedsheets will still ache.

Morning will crawl back through the window,

a thin gold pulse spilling across the linen,

and suddenly the air will flicker,

as if the sun itself remembers where it once lingered.

Dust will float like ash,

catching on the ghost of a sigh.

At night, the moon will come searching,

pouring through the same glass,

silver light cutting over the hollow where his body lay,

finding the outline her warmth left behind.

Even the shadows will shift closer,

as if trying to listen.

And the orchids, brittle now, scent long faded,

will bloom again for an instant,

their fragrance rising from nowhere,

sweet and impossible,

like a memory trying to take shape.

Then, the room will breathe.

A ripple through the sheets,

the faint echo of skin against skin.

Threads stretching, whispering,

as if love were not gone but sleeping.

Even time cannot wash that away.

For when moonlight falls again through the open window,

and orchids bloom somewhere unseen,

the bedsheets will stir softly,

as if remembering how to breathe,

and murmur into the dark,

we remember the shape of love.

I wore your name like a crown of salt.

Each time I cried,

I baptized myself in the wound.

I learned reverence from damage,

how to kneel without a god.

Your absence carved scripture into me,

every verse a fresh opening.

My mouth became rot and prayer,

my tongue,

a disciplined blade.

I blessed what split me open,

called ruin devotion.

When the salt failed,

I bled to keep believing,

crowning myself, again and again,

with the name that never chose me.