12-24-2025, 07:35 AM
Some manhole cover wheezes a serpent sound,
that creeps across my already-molding body.
And just as I think of shedding my case,
this lyrical lizard snarls,
"you’re being nothing but tame."
I pack my skin and skulk a new way,
my leathery hand unkind to my thinking skull,
trailing scraps of myself through the city’s teeth—
a thin, sick leash
dragging its wet music behind me
while the lanterns launder every scene.
I pass a family of four—polished grief;
teenage eyes rehearsing warmth;
a man browsing his wallet like files,
buying witnesses to float above himself;
warehouse maids with soiled hands, perfect hair,
socially stillborn.
The whole street loops—
same chorus, same bruise.
And I feel the city’s mouth
trying to make me harmless.
I lean on an abandoned door
and a tear meets the dirt.
I carve a sentence the city swallowed
from underneath swerving graffiti psalms—
“What if now?”—
drives me down a murky alley.
Here.
In a secret moment of neon hush,
I start to reproduce,
each egg, lime-compacted of what I never was
but will become.
The lizard lingers somewhere in the gutter-glow,
humming a sickness I recognize.
I will wait—half shed, half caressed—
for my fever-born kin.
that creeps across my already-molding body.
And just as I think of shedding my case,
this lyrical lizard snarls,
"you’re being nothing but tame."
I pack my skin and skulk a new way,
my leathery hand unkind to my thinking skull,
trailing scraps of myself through the city’s teeth—
a thin, sick leash
dragging its wet music behind me
while the lanterns launder every scene.
I pass a family of four—polished grief;
teenage eyes rehearsing warmth;
a man browsing his wallet like files,
buying witnesses to float above himself;
warehouse maids with soiled hands, perfect hair,
socially stillborn.
The whole street loops—
same chorus, same bruise.
And I feel the city’s mouth
trying to make me harmless.
I lean on an abandoned door
and a tear meets the dirt.
I carve a sentence the city swallowed
from underneath swerving graffiti psalms—
“What if now?”—
drives me down a murky alley.
Here.
In a secret moment of neon hush,
I start to reproduce,
each egg, lime-compacted of what I never was
but will become.
The lizard lingers somewhere in the gutter-glow,
humming a sickness I recognize.
I will wait—half shed, half caressed—
for my fever-born kin.
