Multiples of 3.

I. Fast
Before the sun lifted,
I woke with my ribs echoing.
Day twenty-three.
The halfway mark,
three times the sacred number,
minus one.
A holy wound.

I drank silence.
Swallowed grief.
Betrayals like nails.
Love like ash.
Names I’ve buried alive.

II. Feast
At twelve,
I broke the silence with teeth.
A riot of sweetness,
salt,
warmth.
I do not know what I celebrated,
but I danced like a funeral reversed.
Maybe I lived.
Maybe they died.
One of them, I think, did.
The whisper of his text
smelled like fear.
I drank it like wine.

III. Cleanse
Now—fennel.
Walnut.
Laxative leaves
in a cup of boiling intent.
I sip to forget the feast,
to cleanse the grief,
to draw out the ghosts
from the corners of my gut.

I started in silence.
Feasted in rage.
Now I float in the in-between.
Empty.
Full.
Uncertain.
Alive.