In the corridor where mirrors go to die,
a single bulb coughs out its last watt of mercy.
She steps through the smoke of her own erasure,
shaved skull gleaming like a planet stripped of atmosphere.
Her face is the color of letters never sent,
white as the pause between a scream and its echo.
Eyes: wet obsidian dipped in funeral wine,
tilted just enough to make angels nervous.
Lips painted the red of stop signs in abandoned cities,
a mouth that learned to speak only in exits.
They part slightly, as if tasting the oxygen
the rest of us take for granted.
The shirt is a lattice of lies,
white threads knotted into windows
that open onto nothing.
Each square a cell, each cell a confession
she refuses to voice.
Behind her, the wall peels like old skin,
revealing plaster the shade of forgotten bones.
Light falls wrong here,
bends around her the way rumors bend around truth.
She is the glitch in the chapel’s hologram,
the saint they airbrushed out of the icon
for being too honest about the nails.
She is the silence after the choir realizes
the song was always about leaving.
Look long enough and you’ll see it:
the moment a person becomes a weather system,
cold front, high pressure,
a storm that learned to smile
right before it devours the horizon.
a single bulb coughs out its last watt of mercy.
She steps through the smoke of her own erasure,
shaved skull gleaming like a planet stripped of atmosphere.
Her face is the color of letters never sent,
white as the pause between a scream and its echo.
Eyes: wet obsidian dipped in funeral wine,
tilted just enough to make angels nervous.
Lips painted the red of stop signs in abandoned cities,
a mouth that learned to speak only in exits.
They part slightly, as if tasting the oxygen
the rest of us take for granted.
The shirt is a lattice of lies,
white threads knotted into windows
that open onto nothing.
Each square a cell, each cell a confession
she refuses to voice.
Behind her, the wall peels like old skin,
revealing plaster the shade of forgotten bones.
Light falls wrong here,
bends around her the way rumors bend around truth.
She is the glitch in the chapel’s hologram,
the saint they airbrushed out of the icon
for being too honest about the nails.
She is the silence after the choir realizes
the song was always about leaving.
Look long enough and you’ll see it:
the moment a person becomes a weather system,
cold front, high pressure,
a storm that learned to smile
right before it devours the horizon.
The Sunday Circle