I will not flinch.

Not from the ache in my bones
nor the heaviness that gathers in the folds of my spirit.
This pain—raw, holy, and uninvited—
has set up camp in the hollows of my ribcage,
and I have made it tea.

I will not cast it out.
I will sit with it, name it,
trace its origins like constellations
stitched across the firmament of my becoming.
I will not beg for numbness.
Let it throb. Let it throb like a warning drum,
a sacred rhythm that means: I am still here.

I will press my lips to the fire
and drink it slow.
Not because I am unbroken,
but because I am willing to be broken beautifully.

I will feed this flame with the letters I never sent,
with the nights I cried into my own hands,
with the echoes of voices that told me I’d never rise.
I will burn what tried to bury me.
I will turn grief into gasoline.

And when I walk,
the earth will remember me not as a man
who suffered quietly,
but as one who lit his pain
like a lantern
and kept walking into the dark—
glowing.

I walk with a furnace under my ribs.
A red beast pacing behind my teeth.
Sheer voltage in my palms,
heat in my hips,
lightning nesting at the base of my spine—
and still, I do not touch.

My body is a hymn of hunger.
Not just wanting, but roaring.
A lion made of lust, pacing the cage
with velvet paws and blood memory.

I see skin and hear psalms.
I smell sweat and taste scripture.
The ache is constant,
like waves against a dam
that I refuse to let break.

Not because I’m holy—
but because I’m healing.
Because I am tired
of giving away thunder
to people who only wanted the storm.

I want to be a lover who knows his own name
when the clothes come off.
I want to stay whole,
even when I open.

So I let the fire burn inside me
and make art from the smoke.
I turn my wanting into poetry,
my ache into prayer,
my restraint into power.

Not untouched—
but untamed and unspent.
Not numb—
but sovereign.
Not lonely—
but lit.

They say men like me are dangerous.
That we must be broken or bled.
But I am not starving.
I am fasting.

And in that difference,
there is revolution.

There is incense in the walls.
Sandalwood and salt.
It clings to the air like memory—
burned slow,
never fully leaving.

I used to wake to bells in my chest,
a rhythm that knew sunrise
before the sky did.
Now I rise only
because gravity insists.
No melody.
Just the dull tug of skin on soul.

She—
or whatever wore light so easily—
left me a silence so loud
it bruises the birdsong.
Even the robins hesitate
at my windowsill now,
uncertain if my hunger
is for seed
or resurrection.

I walked into a church the other day,
but the pews had teeth,
and the stained glass wept red.
I whispered a name I wasn’t supposed to say.
Not in this world.
Not anymore.
The altar cracked a little.
The candle gave up.

There was a crash once—
not metal, not tire,
but spirit tearing fabric,
like linen at a funeral.
Illinois took something holy from me.
A flame that hummed in my ribcage.
Now there’s just a cavern
where offerings used to go.

At night I dream of a humming—
not electrical,
but celestial.
A tune braided in gold and marigold,
calling me to remember
what I must forget.

I still bless the soil.
But the basil wilts with no reason,
and the moon forgets where my house is.
I light candles,
but they curl away from the match,
like even fire is tired of pretending.

I am not bitter.
Bitterness requires hope spoiled.
I am beyond the spoil.
I am bone without marrow,
a psalm missing its last line,
a prayer left in the throat
of a man who once glowed.

There was a voice—
gentle, sacred—
that used to call me something
only God could translate.
Now the heavens are silent.
Or I am deaf.
Either way,
the light in me
has gone.

And I am still here.
Ash in my lungs.
Honey on my hands.
No idea why.

I used to leave a porch light on,
just in case the night forgot its way.
But now I sleep in pitch,
no beacon, no welcome.
Only the hum of streetlamps
flickering like old grief.

She—
or it, or whatever haunts my ribs now—
used to laugh like wind through chimes,
filling the silence between prayers
I never said out loud.
Now the wind just breaks windows
and whispers cruel things through the cracks.

Illinois swallowed something sacred that day.
I don’t go near the overpass anymore.
The guardrails still hold teethmarks
and the sun won’t rise there right.
Not since that afternoon
when sirens replaced birdsong
and time melted
into a puddle I never stepped over.

People still wave like I’m whole.
Like I’m made of bones and smiles
and not just scaffolding wrapped in old clothes.
I nod. I wave.
But inside, I’m a chalk outline
where something used to stand tall.

I tend to the garden still.
But the tomatoes rot early
and the lilies bloom too late.
It’s all off rhythm,
like the universe forgot the beat
the day the sky stopped answering me.

There was a voice once,
small and wild,
that called me something soft—
something only mine.
Now, no one dares speak that name.
Not even me.

I am not angry at the wind.
I am not angry at the asphalt.
I am not angry at the glass.
I am angry at the light.
Because it left.

And I stayed.