Corpus mortum

And silence devours what's left of me.

IV –

The clock strikes nine,

I guess it is time

to take out my guts

and wash them in brine.

Grief fattens on them like swine,

I rinse, I rub, I pray—

but still it stays.

My body beside me,

hollow, aligned,

a shrine to all that decayed.

Numquam iterum senties.

“You will never feel again.”

V –

I have gnawed my body open, searching for signs,

a single pulse, a trace of the sublime.

Numbness creeps through me like a vine,

the human in me long left behind.

Numquam iterum senties.

“You will never feel again.”

I –

Ghosts nestle between my teeth,

haunting the child I buried beneath.

My ribcage—a locked cathedral,

guarding emotions I no longer feel.

Numquam iterum senties.

“You will never feel again.”

XX –

I rip the layers off of me,

all this flesh reeks of misery.

I lit candles inside my wound, hoping they’d pray for me.

I shall heal, I shall heal—

God, the ghastly, grieving shrine I peel.

Numquam iterum senties.

“You will never feel again.”

VIII –

I burn the marrow to summon what's left of me,

I break my bones so sorrow can seep.

I offer my pulse as incense to the abyss,

and whisper, forgive me, forgive me.

Numquam iterum senties.

“You will never feel again.”

VI –

All that I am is swallowed, yet still I breathe, still I breathe.

Will I feel alive again if I bleed, if I bleed?

The vessel is empty, the vessel is broken.

The codex is sealed — the codex is sealed.

Numquam iterum senties.

“You will never feel again.”

—Umbra

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