Stalactites

Inside my chest is a cave filled with

midnight-colored bats with eyes

too dark to be stars

 

and cuts too deep

to be scars mark their sorrows,

blood clotting into scarlet scabs of woe,

 

hanging upside-down from stalactites

formed from the dripping of

my stifled tears

 

back into my

hollow chest; it will always

baffle me that you couldn’t hear the

 

drops as they formed lakes in my lungs

with depths you would never

explore, or

 

monsters

you still won’t dare to imagine,

with straight-razor claws cutting traumas

 

into pasts too far away to suture, carving flaws

into my future faster than rivers

run tracks

 

into salt

mine mountains, pouring past

rib cages into the moors of my spine, filling

 

cracks, making whole, building up what has been

torn down one too many times,

the structure

 

of my soul,

filled with smoke and mirrors,

hollowness sculpted from continents of fear, and

 

bats.

 

JS (c)