I bleed red, not ink, not myth, not flame,
just blood in a body that still knows my name,
still knows the weight of a world that won’t bend,
still knows how it feels when I break but pretend.
My bones feel hollow like thunder left dry,
like a sky that forgot how to learn how to cry,
I stand in the mirror but I don’t stand at all,
I’m a shadow that’s learning the shape of its fall.
And I cry, and I cry, till my breath turns to glass,
till the past keeps on pulling me under the past,
till my heart beats a drum in a funeral tune,
and the silence inside me eats light from the room.
I am not what they whisper, not what they decide,
I am fractures of feelings I try to hide,
I am stitched from the moments I barely survived,
I am still here, still shaking, still somehow alive.
I bleed red like the rest, no crown, no disguise,
just salt in my mouth and truth in my eyes,
just a soul that got tired of holding it in,
just a human who learned how to crack from within.
And maybe I’m broken, but broken is real,
it’s the way that the numbness begins to reveal
that even in falling, there’s proof I remain,
that even in wreckage, I still feel pain.
So don’t call me distant, don’t call me gone,
I’m the echo of every “keep going” I’ve drawn,
I’m the tremble of hope in a shaking hand’s plea,
I am human. I bleed. I am me.