Work Text:
The tips of my fingers are falling apart.
Skin wilted to muscle, if
I picked it at it long enough
I could detach bone.
Black means death, the absence of light,
happiness, pain. I can't feel pain in my ten fingers.
I can't feel pain at the base of my neck,
crawling up the back of my skull—I think
it means in death, parts of me were being eaten away.
Picked apart by vultures. To think,
the only people who know the feeling
are the ones who hate me.
To think,
I barely touched death. I danced with it,
our fingers locked and slipped away and
I was alive again. I am a phoenix, my wings
made of fury and my ash hand-crafted. And it's
been said that I'm lucky.
It's been said that people have had to claw their way out
with their own teeth, breaking them on reentry.
All I got was some fried muscle.
It's been said all I am is lucky, never paying the price of
ogling or attention. I chop wood, go home,
no one's on my back for my children or my scraps
or my life. But isn't that another crime?
To live a life so wasted and squandered, they have nothing to speak of it?
I crawled my way out of hell, and no one
can remember my name. I go about my day like nothing happened.
Like my hands aren't falling apart as we speak.
I go about my day and I only have fire to keep me going;
my core is made of molten; I'm a machine not a person.