Gathered Throats Running Dry

A prayer is a begging to be heard. I gnaw at my fisted knuckles as if a skeptic whose tongue is forbidden to speak of marred ideologies. Here I choke upon the language of the holy—for how long it must linger before it mimics the sound of a grief-sickening elegy. And this worship will ever be hollowed, I press my weight to the verses of each bible I am coerced to recite. Gradually it will tell us of my gentle rot, the peeling of skins, limbs dipping along these fettered corpses. However sin-defying, I walk through threads of an unearthly becoming. My silence will be loud enough to mean this prolonging ruination. By then, the heavens will crumble in my open palms. They will have to be on their knees and beg for my forgiveness. Still my aching bones yearn to be unveiled. On some days, I think I am a giant with hands I do not recognize, and I will squeeze the life out of them akin to how smaller they made me, yet not tiny enough to fit in. Listen to my mothered anger: if there exists such divinity, I will devour it whole.

Second, third, fourth. I hold no expectations. I have already realized that it will not matter to anybody regardless of the countless deaths I experienced.

I stood in the same place. I can no longer understand the depth of my pain. I feel older than anyone around me but this childlike rage and loneliness annoyingly persist. It crawls under my wishbone. Perhaps, I have shunned forever when my bones cried, said this ache outlives the love I swallowed, how the lesser deaths always stretch the young so hard, they pull the spines on my back and forget that I ever had wings. I cannot fly my way out of here. I fear I will not be able to draw my face if you ask me to. I stopped looking in the mirror and although sometimes I unconsciously do, I cannot see anything for me to be proud of. My eyes do not form a crescent shape anymore, forcing a smile to cover the weariness I feel all over my body. I find it difficult to function like other normal people do.

I will tell you I have done nothing for years but hate myself for feeling this way. Something pulls at my body’s end—regardless, stretching, after death even—in small fistfuls. I wonder if I have gone cruel and it is probably the case now. I somehow do not wish to admit it. I have stared at the void far too long it started to consume me. All I perceive is I am meant to turn into a skeleton and get eaten by the soil. What is more to expect of someone who never learned the word forgiveness? None. Even if my eyes are open or not, I do not see much difference; it is still purely darkness. I will cease to exist and wither similar to these flowers’ destiny when already neglected. You see, it is fine if you forget me.

I do not deserve to be remembered anyway.

I have lived different lives. I witnessed how it all started and ended. I have loved many things until it seemed I can no longer do. Rather than making me stronger, my traumas turned me hideous. I reek of a smoker’s breath. I hold the worst of love in cherry pits, no calm love to give. I wear sadness as if a second skin, these gathered throats run dry and I throw myself in a momentary sleep.

A day will come where I will not look back. You will witness how these shackles will shatter. The remnants of the past will not haunt me any longer, their footprints will not walk on the same road I take, and the shadows that visit me even in my dreams will disappear.

There I will not hesitate to pass them by.

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