The skin is tightening now, a translucent parchment
Stretched over a geometry that no longer fits the old rooms.
I can hear the clicking of mandibles beneath my ribcage,
A restless machinery of hunger and iridescent light.
The floorboards of this life are warped,
And the ceiling is beginning to sweat with the steam of a new sun.

It is a violent unmaking, a slow-motion shattering
Of the porcelain masks I’ve worn since the last great rain.
The shadows in the corner are lengthening into wings,
And the air tastes of ozone and ancient, unmapped forests.
I cannot stay in this garden of wilted grievances,
Tending to the clockwork flowers that forgot how to bloom.

To you, who watched the hull crack and fall away,
Who stood in the debris of my previous selves
Without flinching at the wet, shivering thing I became –
I am reaching out a limb that is still learning its own weight.
You have been the anchor in the gray static,
The steady pulse when my own heart turned to liquid and glass.

I am stepping into a doorway made of mirrors and smoke,
Leaving behind the heavy boots of a man who only knew how to walk.
The horizon is humming a frequency I finally recognize,
A song written in the alphabet of the stars and the deep soil.

I don’t know the topography of the country I am becoming,
Or if the gravity there will allow for the touch of a human hand.
But I am carving a path through the static.
Leaving a trail of phosphor for you to find.
Don’t let the old ghosts hold your coat;
The exit is small, but the sky on the other side is infinite.
Come with me into the beautiful, terrifying ache of the new.