Inkblood

We do not write with pens, but scalpels—

slicing open veins to let the alphabet spill:

rust-red, mercury-quick, a cursive of ghosts.

(Each period is a pebble dropped into a well—

we never hear it hit the bottom.)

Some nights, the page is a whetstone.

We sharpen metaphors until they gleam—

the moon is a hangnail, grief is a room—

and press them to the pulse of a stranger’s wrist.

Language, that feral cat, purrs in the alley.

It knows our footsteps by heart.

They say every poem is a suicide note

to a world that forgets to read between the lines.

But look closer: here, in the margin’s breath,

a girl folds her father’s silence into origami cranes.

Here, a war widow plaits her husband’s name

into her hair, each braid a psalm.

Here, a boy tucks his stutter into a jar

and sets it adrift on the river.

We are archaeologists of the unspoken,

digging up fossils of laughter trapped in limestone,

brushing dust from the vertebrae of a sob.

Our hands are maps of every elegy we’ve swallowed,

every hymn we’ve sewn into the lining of our coats.

So when they ask, Why poetry?

whisper: Because the universe forgot to give us pockets,

and we needed somewhere to hide the light.