Not Lucid Enough

Not lucid enough—

none of this flesh, none of this bone,

not anything.

The world slicks—rot under skin,

Splits like bruised fruit, leaking shadow.

-

Husks—hollows walking,

Ghosts gnaw glass

until their mouths are blood,

swallowing faces

they cannot spit back.

-

Time. Fingers rust in me,

Twisting clockwork—teeth pulled from bone,

Seconds snap, minutes fracture,

on this strange shore.

Dreams drown slow beneath salt-thick oceans,

Horizon knifed, cut clean in half.

-

Then—

The dream, or its corpse.

A door, splinters gnashing skin.

Blocks grinding,

bone screaming on bone.

The Lament Configuration chews its own tongue, spitting shrapnel.

Edges tear. Skin unravels.

Each shift a scream,

Each scream—

Mine. Not mine.

I press, but it swallows

hope—a thread that knots the throat,

soaked and choking.

-

Growls outside. Inside louder.

Inside the ribs,

Behind the tongue,

A gnawing—rats? Teeth? Memory?

Something chews thought to rot,

gnaws through marrow,

And I leak. I leak. I leak.

-

Nothing is lucid enough.

-

Typing on my cell,

But the words slip, keys snap,

Signals twitch, convulse beneath skin.

Letters choke, crawl out wrong,

like bones pushed through skin.

Fingers—wrong. Hands—wrong. Me—wrong.

Wasn’t that how you check?

If this is dreaming or not?

-

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Something splits. Something curls under itself, black and bruised.

Wrong in the breath that stumbles,

Wrong in the shadow that follows me but does not wait.

I should have arrived.

I did everything right.

That's a lie, like all the other lies,

that wear my skin better.

Cleaner, as I twitch beneath.

-

This place, this skin,

This breath—

Not mine. Never mine.

This ache, this shadow—

A mask that forgets it’s a mask.

-

None of it holds.

Not bone. Not word. Not dark. Not skin.

None of it.

Lucid.

Enough.

-

None of it lucid enough.

.