In the lacquered silence of a chrysalis that never learned to hatch,
another eidolon uncoils—skin drawn so thin it has become a membrane between worlds,
a parchment of moonlight stretched over the ribcage of a leviathan that drowned in its own echo.
The cranium: an orb of burnished ivory,
shaved to the gloss of a reliquary that once housed the tongue of a mute prophet,
where every pore has been sealed with the wax of extinct stars,
leaving only the faint blue tracery of veins—
rivers that forgot their way to the sea
and instead meander beneath the surface like subterranean hymns.
Eyes: twin obsidian shards embedded in a mask of frozen milk,
pupils dilated to the diameter of black suns,
gazing through the viewer as though the viewer were merely a smudge on the glass of eternity—
lids weighted with the kohl of a thousand funerary barges,
rimmed in the bruised violet of storms that never quite arrived.
The mouth: a lacuna slashed open by the quill of some deranged calligrapher,
filled with a red so saturated it vibrates at the frequency of arterial screams,
lips swollen like the petals of a carnivorous orchid
that has learned to feed on the concept of kisses rather than the act.
A single droplet—carmine, pregnant with the gravity of sacrificial dawns—
hangs suspended at the lower lip’s precipice,
refusing to fall,
as though even gravity has been seduced into stasis
by the sheer audacity of this painted wound.
The neck: a column of alabaster so elongated it seems to have been drawn by the hand of a dying giraffe,
tilting at an angle that defies the tyranny of vertebrae,
as though the spine itself has petitioned for asylum in another dimension.
Garments: gossamer armor forged from the spun breath of ghosts who died mid-sigh,
clinging to a torso that has forgotten the distinction between concave and convex,
between vessel and void.
This is the second seraph of the cataclysmic boudoir,
the one who arrived after the first had already devoured the alphabet of desire,
who wears the aftermath like a second skin
and smiles with the serenity of a guillotine that has learned meditation.
Here stands the elongated elegy of flesh transcended,
a cathedral built from the bones of gender’s abandoned cathedral,
where every reflection is a betrayal
and every betrayal is a masterpiece
signed in lipstick the color of the last heartbeat of the universe.
another eidolon uncoils—skin drawn so thin it has become a membrane between worlds,
a parchment of moonlight stretched over the ribcage of a leviathan that drowned in its own echo.
The cranium: an orb of burnished ivory,
shaved to the gloss of a reliquary that once housed the tongue of a mute prophet,
where every pore has been sealed with the wax of extinct stars,
leaving only the faint blue tracery of veins—
rivers that forgot their way to the sea
and instead meander beneath the surface like subterranean hymns.
Eyes: twin obsidian shards embedded in a mask of frozen milk,
pupils dilated to the diameter of black suns,
gazing through the viewer as though the viewer were merely a smudge on the glass of eternity—
lids weighted with the kohl of a thousand funerary barges,
rimmed in the bruised violet of storms that never quite arrived.
The mouth: a lacuna slashed open by the quill of some deranged calligrapher,
filled with a red so saturated it vibrates at the frequency of arterial screams,
lips swollen like the petals of a carnivorous orchid
that has learned to feed on the concept of kisses rather than the act.
A single droplet—carmine, pregnant with the gravity of sacrificial dawns—
hangs suspended at the lower lip’s precipice,
refusing to fall,
as though even gravity has been seduced into stasis
by the sheer audacity of this painted wound.
The neck: a column of alabaster so elongated it seems to have been drawn by the hand of a dying giraffe,
tilting at an angle that defies the tyranny of vertebrae,
as though the spine itself has petitioned for asylum in another dimension.
Garments: gossamer armor forged from the spun breath of ghosts who died mid-sigh,
clinging to a torso that has forgotten the distinction between concave and convex,
between vessel and void.
This is the second seraph of the cataclysmic boudoir,
the one who arrived after the first had already devoured the alphabet of desire,
who wears the aftermath like a second skin
and smiles with the serenity of a guillotine that has learned meditation.
Here stands the elongated elegy of flesh transcended,
a cathedral built from the bones of gender’s abandoned cathedral,
where every reflection is a betrayal
and every betrayal is a masterpiece
signed in lipstick the color of the last heartbeat of the universe.
The Sunday Circle