breathe while you still can

How well do you know the shadows that follow you?

Inky black, a night with no stars, they stretch after your hollow soul, shrouding your paper skin with a veil of terror and malevolence. They curl around your neck and whisper flatteries while you struggle to breathe. You are a wisp, an afterimage, battered by the darkness you hold so tightly to.

You spit venom on your leaden tongue, your teeth sharp enough to draw blood (your lips are red as rose petals, dripping with hesitance and dying words). There is poison nestled in the chambers of your heart, a mass of torn and empty muscle that blooms nightshade and wolfsbane. It moves sluggishly through abandoned veins (living has never been so painful) and leaks from tired eyes.

You have not cried in so long (do you remember the last true tear you shed?) that your eyes are too dry to blink. Blue-black veins glow dangerously under parchment skin, parallel to the tendrils of darkness that sit heavy on your bleeding knuckles.

The shadows you despise and love, you hold them so dear, they are draining the fading light of your soul. And in return, you dig your sharpened claws into them and demand their power. The same darkness that yearns to kill you (ripping, tearing, you are patchwork and stitches, falling apart at the seams) is the darkness that bends to your will.

You are not human (were you human, once?). A monster in all but name, you destroy every opposing creature in your path. (You crave this power, despite how much it hurts to crush your enemies beneath your ink-dripping fingers. Your knuckles are battered, bruised, the bones of your hands are so fragile and broken and it hurts.) The world is cruel and dark and hell-bent on trapping your beneath its heel, ground into the soil until you are a bloated corpse to attract flies. But you are a monster of venom and wilted petals, of malice and black, black, black.

You know the shadows well (too well). They pull and push and tear you apart inch by inch.

(The shadows have blended with your creaking body. You are one and the same, the pain and power is yours and theirs together.

How well do you know yourself?)

another church service journal ramble :)

was i thinking about jjk while writing this? absolutely

my hair is short now and fluffy like a cloud and it curls up a lot more now and i love it sm im actually planning to draw it >:))