Stained upon the white horse

 

I am stained white atop my white horse

 

The blood runs in slow rivers down the animal’s ribs,

quiet, inevitable,

 

praying no one is watching.

hands clean, eyes wide,

 

You stand at the edge of the field.

Your gaze fixed on the spreading color

as if it’s a sunset you paid for.

 

preferring the spectacle of my bleeding

to the small labor of hearing me name it.

 

You’d rather watch the stain grow

than step one foot into the mud

 

than lean close enough to hear the wet sound my heart makes when it forgets to beat.

 

I feel nothing.

Not the soft nothing of sleep;

 

the nothing that rings,

a bell made of broken glass

hanging in an empty church.

 

My thoughts have slipped their leash,

wandering off like dogs

that finally learned the fence was never real.

 

I have been hollowed,

 

Like a scarecrow 

still saluting the crows

long after the field has been harvested.

 

You may not have seen,

but I’ve winced before

You left me a wound and a needle

 

the instruction:

do not scream while you disappear.

 

So I learned to stitch 

in the negative space

between heartbeats,

 

thread made of whatever light

was too tired to leave.

I tell myself the scars are doors.

 

I walk through them upright,

until upright is the only story

my body still believes.

 

I ride tall,

spine a cathedral 

no one prays in anymore,

 

You’d rather watch me bleed

than watch me fold.

 

I am the monument they asked for:

 

tall, bleeding,

still in the saddle.

My horse keeps moving,

 

stopping would mean

someone might finally hear

the wet sound of a heart trying to remember

it’s allowed to break out loud.

 

I’m afraid of how this world forges men to be:

 

all iron, no echo.

A soldier who salutes his own shadow

then punishes it for trembling.

 

I remember when pain was just the world’s way of tapping you on the shoulder

to make sure you were still home.

 

When tears were weather

and imagination outranked armor.

 

When we ran barefoot through summer nights

 

chasing the smell of cut grass and possibility,

 

believing bruises were only temporary tattoos from wrestling angels.

 

But now,

 

I will ride this white horse,

until the horizon learns mercy

 

or until my spine finally snaps

from holding up a sky

nobody asked me to carry.

 

I want to remember the time

before they taught me to trade feeling for posture.

 

And when the fall finally comes

 

Let the dirt take me sideways,

mouth open,

 

red everywhere,

no posture left to protect.

 

Let the ground be the first thing

that doesn’t ask me

to bleed respectably.

I am stained white atop my white horse

 

The blood runs in slow rivers down the animal’s ribs,

quiet, inevitable,

 

praying no one is watching.

hands clean, eyes wide,

 

You stand at the edge of the field.

Your gaze fixed on the spreading color

as if it’s a sunset you paid for.

 

preferring the spectacle of my bleeding

to the small labor of hearing me name it.

 

You’d rather watch the stain grow

than step one foot into the mud

 

than lean close enough to hear the wet sound my heart makes when it forgets to beat.

 

I feel nothing.

Not the soft nothing of sleep;

 

the nothing that rings,

a bell made of broken glass

hanging in an empty church.

 

My thoughts have slipped their leash,

wandering off like dogs

that finally learned the fence was never real.

 

I have been hollowed,

 

Like a scarecrow 

still saluting the crows

long after the field has been harvested.

 

You may not have seen,

but I’ve winced before

You left me a wound and a needle

 

the instruction:

do not scream while you disappear.

 

So I learned to stitch 

in the negative space

between heartbeats,

 

thread made of whatever light

was too tired to leave.

I tell myself the scars are doors.

 

I walk through them upright,

until upright is the only story

my body still believes.

 

I ride tall,

spine a cathedral 

no one prays in anymore,

 

You’d rather watch me bleed

than watch me fold.

 

I am the monument they asked for:

 

tall, bleeding,

still in the saddle.

My horse keeps moving,

 

stopping would mean

someone might finally hear

the wet sound of a heart trying to remember

it’s allowed to break out loud.

 

I’m afraid of the man this world is forging me into:

 

all iron, no echo.

A soldier who salutes his own shadow

then punishes it for trembling.

 

I remember when pain was just the world’s way of tapping you on the shoulder

to make sure you were still home.

 

When tears were weather

and imagination outranked armor.

 

When we ran barefoot through summer nights

 

chasing the smell of cut grass and possibility,

 

believing bruises were only temporary tattoos from wrestling angels.

 

But now,

 

I will ride this white horse,

until the horizon learns mercy

 

or until my spine finally snaps

from holding up a sky

nobody asked me to carry.

 

I want to remember the time before they taught me to trade feeling for posture.

 

And when the fall finally comes

 

Let the dirt take me sideways,

mouth open,

 

red everywhere,

no posture left to protect.

 

Let the ground be the first thing

that doesn’t ask me

to bleed respectably.