V. H. King's Ink

working on painting #3 in a series 
i started 4 years ago, realizing 
it's how i felt living through the first 
month of this and last and every
other year. part of me hates it, 
now:

seven days grieving insurrection,
sudden death, senseless murder, 
shattered dreams, and that one 
time i didn't want to wake up 
from surgery. did i really survive
just for this? hard to say— 

but then this iteration: choked
to the gills, knowing all the ways
the world demonizes you. guts
scorched in righteous indignation
because you are worth so much

more than what they want you
to believe. adamant in the
importance of your work, your voice,
even when it feels your reach is 
microscopic and nanospecific.

choosing resistance by tasting 
what is sweet, because it is still there
even in all this horror. the worst 
timeline is the one where you never
lived at all. you have this life, you
know this world, you've been held
by stardust and sunsets and hope—

not that fragile feathered thing, 
but the flicker of a stubborn 
if wavering flame: still there, and
somehow brighter, when you're 
small, lost, scared; melting from

the inside out for days on end 
under the concrete gallows of 
capitalism, consumed on nights
when you wish you didn't believe
in anything at all, and no matter

how hard you try, there is still this. 
some irrational, possessive, jealous
anchor, a metastatic parasite 
embedded in bone, spirit, body—
because the marrow of your mystery 
demands you be released from
your suffering without having to die 
first.