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In my seventh year

All the colours burned away

Monoxide peripheries

Ichorous and grey

A wastrels journey

Dragged to chaotic distance

The disconnect made whole

Given to the grave

This fortress of flesh and bone

Beatific in rigor

The bargain is struck, mindless and vile

Clawing out of deeper circles with the hands of a child

In my seventh year the shadows left the walls

The nightmares crept into the days

As days ceaselessly withered with a pall

My wreath of medication woven

My coronation made

Destined to be broken under the yoke

In bitterness I reign

In my fortress of flesh and bone I feel nothing

Not the searing of your touch

The lash of tongues

In my fortress of flesh and bone I am sovereign

In my seventh year I saw so much of the world

My first kiss from the bluest lips

And how the ground collapsed beneath me

The rain caking the ash on my limbs

The rain that never left

The very first day I witnessed safety

It was already long out of reach

Laughing with its taciturn sneer

The majesty of its insult

Mocking me

with the violence and the hopelessness to come...