SCORN

I gather promises on paper scraps with hands worn thin. They flutter, ugly butterflies of confession scattered in distraction. I pull them to my chest, dampened with sweat. Worthless as December’s leaves.

No more.

A throat scraped raw from words shoved into the void between. I won’t hold vigil any longer. Won’t weave nets of safety from my own flesh. I am hollow with pain that I now accept as my own. I’ve claimed it, named it, cradled it in my rocking arms.

My eyes refuse your ugliness, this ruin you've made of truth. What you fear isn't me but how I witness you. How I hold your reflection like water holds sky.

Pure, merciless clarity.

Diaphanous flesh, so fragile it cannot hold light. This pain, though, it remains. Devoted. It outlasts every promise you've broken . The solution waits where it always has.

Locked within, access refused audience.

Those wings I gave you, How magnificent they were when they first unfurled. Feathers catching sunlight, casting shadows across my days. I've severed them myself. Each cut precise, deliberate, vindictive. They fall where you stand, molted evidence of flight and failure.

Let them rot there on the ground between us.

Look me in the eyes as you whisper, I'll regret you. We both recognize the lie. Your terror in my clarity.

I don't need your friendship. I need distances where I can remember myself.

But still I say, come. Sit by this fire I've built from what remains.

The flames catch in your eyes, and for a moment I remember why I once believed.

But you can't stay. We both know this.

I close my eyes against the sight of you leaving. I close my eyes to let the leaving finish its work. I close my eyes and take you in completely, one last time.

It never changes. We clip what lifts us too high. We bear the brief, dizzying fall. We leave the evidence where it falls, a trail of feathers marking where flight once seemed possible.

And we tell ourselves, every time.

This is how I save what remains of me.