I feel it start in my bones,
a split-decision buried in marrow.
To run.
Not from something I can nameβ
just a biblical urge to flee
before the house catches fire.
There are insects inside me, saints of panic.
They swarm my organs, scrape at the walls,
a million small bodies insisting now.
My ribs buzz like a shaken hive.
My skin canβt keep the secret anymore.
I donβt know who I am.
My name slips off me like wet cloth.
I check my reflection and find a vacancy,
a face waiting to be assigned
to whatever survives this.
I am suffocating, but there is no river.
My lungs fill with absence, with polite drowning.
Something is rising in me without a shape,
floodwater with no rain,
pressure where a soul should be.
I want to disappear without dyingβ
to be unstitched, returned to parts.
Let the hunger eat what it needs.
Let the insects scatter.
Let whatever is chasing me finally starve.
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Pretty words for ugly things.
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