Writers Jam

the walls breathe in rhythm their plaster lungs swelling with a dust

that has memorized every sigh ever exhaled into this room.

the clock ticks not as sound but as an executioner’s footstep

approaching a prisoner’s cell.

each second a nail. each minute a coffin lid.

i stare at the hands circling,

metal bones gnawing their own shadow,

devouring the very hours they are meant to guard.

my life falls in line with this ritual,

spoon scraping against porcelain at breakfast,

the ache of shoes carrying me through streets already walked

by ghosts of myself.

it happens like clockwork the way the mirror refuses

to recognize me in the morning,bthe way my voice falters mid-sentence as if ashamed of being born.

there is no wonder leftnin repetition,

only the sterile perfection of collapse: the body sleeps,

the body wakes, the body drowns in silence again

and yet, something fragile resists

a shiver in the machinery, a tooth on the gear that refuses to fit, a faint rebellion in my chest

that whispers, break the cycle or let the cycle break you.