when i die i want my corpse to be unrecognizable. a something-or-other dead on the side of the road, half-eaten, half-crushed, all-forgotten

i am no hector of troy.
the gods of Olympus won't keep my corpse clean until my father comes pleading.
my gods are the earthworms writhing beneath me and gift-giver Gaia, who strips my bones of their flesh and whispers softly as she feeds me to her children "lie still, lie still, lie still"

/a k/
noun
1. heavy wind, cold rain, & yes the stars, & yes these hands of mine. a dream in my chest is melting. my dream sheds its muddy, thunder-stained skin & asks for a heart of peony fields this time.
2. & the nights get heavy like they always do. i am older which means when i think of forests i get stuck not on the robin eggs but on the fox teeth. in my head I am hunting for myself, but I come up empty again. the night grows so wide it could be a cavern & i am somewhere underneath it, inside it, lost. but travellers always leave lanterns behind & as i feel for the candle there arrives a memory of bronze-coloured light.
3. so i dream, i dream, i keep dreaming. one word in my mouth crystallizes like sugar: hope.

Hope is not a delicate bird.
It doesn’t have colourful feathers or comes.
When you need it most
Hope is a starving rat
An ugly thing
With broken glass claws and yellow pointed teeth
That carries diseases like rebellion, revolution and change
Were ever its tail flicks they drop
It snorts pesticides like coke
It survives in our world
Able to find a way to live were nothing else can.

I had a broken tooth and you had a broken car that sang at certain speeds.
I was holding my crimson soaked mouth, we were all laughing.
You, the only one who was worried.
Speeding to the doctor with your hands at ten and two,
sending me the occasional look, asking if it hurts,
does it hurt.
-All the memories of you do

I used to think blue eyes were pretty,
his were not.
his were not cornflower, sapphire, baby, indigo, azure,
or cloudy sky blue.
His were midnight where the light pollution from the city blocks the stars.
Iceberg, squall, hypothermia, eventual death

The sky is on fire,
and the world holds its breath.
It bleeds out in streaks of crimson,
fingers of flame
licking the edges of clouds,
leaving behind ash that the wind cannot carry away.

It doesn’t scream.
No, it only burns
in silence,
a slow, tender rage,
as if the heavens themselves
have grown tired
of holding the weight of the stars.

We watch from below,
a chorus of small prayers
wrapped in our own fragile skin.
Some of us still believe in rain,
in the mercy of the dark,
but tonight,
the fire is too bright,
too wild,
too beautiful
to look away from.

The sky is on fire,
and I wonder if this is how
the end begins—
a blaze too beautiful to escape,
too hot to be touched.

We hold onto the night,
our hands trembling with the heat,
knowing,
somehow,
that this fire does not care
if we burn with it.

The sky is on fire,
and all we can do
is watch
as it consumes
the last of the light.

You fear the stars
not because of their beauty
but because of their distance
how they hang unbothered
while you remain
earthbound

They do not need you
Their cold light spills
forgotten knowledge
burning far away
untouchable
like the things you cannot know
You fear their silence
the way they look down
without speaking,
without offering comfort
or explanation

They are too old
too full of stories
you are not part of
whispers of time
that do not echo
in your fleeting breath
In the dark
you trace their patterns
the vastness presses
against your ribs
reminding you
how small you are

You fear the stars
the absence of answers
the endlessness of questions
the reminder that you
are just another blink
in the night sky