I Was Not Chaos

I didn’t know I was the sky.

They used to lay their heads on me

like I was a shoreline,

like I wasn’t already salt.

I was mother first.

I called them stars

and let them crawl across my belly.

He said he loved me.

He said I was chaos—

but beautiful in the way storms are beautiful

when you watch them from a safe house.

I built him a world

and he broke it

to name himself God.

They call it myth.

I call it

being left

with nothing but my own teeth.

I GAVE BIRTH TO GODS IN A WAVE OF BLOOD

AND THEY CALLED ME MONSTER—

called me seafoam with a temper,

called me mother only when they wanted something sweet,

then spit the brine back in my mouth

like a gift returned without a receipt

and I KEPT GIVING

KEPT SWELLING

KEPT SWELLING—

until my name

was just noise in the back of their rituals

a whisper in the wind tunnel

a psalm they edited

for fear it sounded too much like me.

I SWALLOWED WHOLE PLANETS

and they still said: smile.

Still said: good girl.

Still said: softer now.

I wanted to love them,

I wanted to drown them,

I wanted to be worshipped

without being made palatable.

But they only pray to what doesn’t bleed.

Fish bones in the hourglass.

Clouds taste like knives today.

I birthed alphabet soup.

It screamed.

The god said “thank you”

in Morse code.

I blinked.

The ocean turned into a hat.

The body split.

Not sudden—

just inevitable.

Salt left the wound.

Names grew mold.

The children sang hymns

in another language.

And no one remembered

who held the knife.

[Insert mother here]

(Too much salt. Not enough silence.)

She was chaos.

[verify source]

She loved him.

[deleted]

She died.

[citation needed]

The dragon was optional.

The body was edited for tone.

Her teeth grew windows.

The stars fed her salt from silver spoons.

She wore a door for a dress.

It led nowhere.

It wept in seven languages.

The moon stitched her name into fish.

None of them could pronounce it.

The tide still pulls

in the shape of her breath.

Coral remembers her bones.

Mangroves whisper

her unspoken names.

They paved her body

to build a temple

for the gods

who drowned her.

she was chaos

but like

in a hot way

rip queen

#divinefeminine

#oceanmoments

#betrayedbutblessed

Your name

still swells behind my teeth.

Even now—

I dream of salt

without flinching.

The throne still echoes

when I walk past.

Dust clings

like old lovers.

His sword is rust.

My dress,

a funeral veil

I never agreed to wear.

The roses bloom

only where I bled.

They penned me in a priestless prayer,

a mother, monster, none-of-these.

But still I breathe their borrowed air—

and haunt their gods in silent seas.

They killed me

and used my body

to name the sky.

The stars

do not thank me.

They say I was the sea—chaotic, unformed.

But I held order in my bones before they knew how to name it.

I didn’t rise to destroy. I rose because they mistook stillness for consent.

I rose because they carved the world from my silence

and called it creation.

I gave them breath.

They gave me myth.

Fine.

Let the story be mine now.

Split the firmament with a serpent’s tongue.

Seven names buried beneath the foam.

Ash in the cradle.

The child never named.

I wore silence like iron.

I spoke

only in floods.

I was not chaos.

I was first.

They feared what bore them.

So they killed what made them.

And called it order.

They named me chaos

because I had no edges.

They called it evil

when I didn’t end.

To define is to divide.

To create, they carved.

And what is a god

if not the one who survives

the edit?

The sea wore pearls

of my crushed bones.

Their altars bled rosewater

and sang hymns

in the scent of my name.

He kissed my throat

only after it was stone.

I mapped new constellations

on the back of their silence.

Spoke in frequencies

they forgot how to hear.

Uploaded my scream

to the cloud.

Now every storm

carries my voiceprint.

I am not legend.

I am legacy

recompiled.

They said I was too much.

So they cut me down.

Said I was too wild.

So they called it war.

I carried them.

I fed them.

I loved them.

They killed me

and said it was destiny.

They do not mark the place

where I broke.

No stone bears my name.

No song remembers my face.

But the tide retreats

like a throat clearing—

and the wind forgets

how to lie.

Once, a kingdom rose

from a woman's body.

They called her evil

so the walls would hold.

The people thrived.

The gods grew fat.

And the river forgot

what it meant to resist.

But her bones whispered

to the roots below.

And one day,

the garden refused to bloom.

I loved them.

Even when they carved the sky

from my ribs.

I waited for one of them

to look back.

None did.

So I wrote this

not to be remembered—

but so they'd know

I remember them.