Fit for this Queen of Hearts

Today the house is empty.

Not silent,

no, silence has music.

This is something else.

A humming absence.

A stillness that presses in from the walls

like a too-tight dress

stitched from the fabric of every unanswered question.

My heart mirrors the space:

a vacant room with the curtains drawn,

where echoes are more loyal than memories.

I dreamt a little too deeply last night.

Wandered too far into the soft corridors of a life

that could have been,

a warm mug left waiting on a table,

a hand grazing mine not in goodbye,

but in recognition.

But morning is cruel.

It snatches the dream mid-sentence,

leaving only the aftertaste of sweetness turned sour.

Reality crashes in,

not with thunder, but with the click of a door that won’t open.

The joy isn’t here today.

The sun

a pale imposter

burns instead of shines.

The light scrapes the floorboards raw.

The air is too dense, too alive

with reminders that everything continues

even when I do not.

Each step is an elegy.

My body, a cathedral of ache.

My lips, vacant altars.

My arms, loops of yearning

that tighten every time I try to let go.

Hope sits in the corner,

folded like a coat I no longer wear.

It is not discarded.

It is simply too heavy today,

too bright, too expectant.

And so, I turn away.

Not forever. Just… for now.

I cannot kiss the future with this taste of ash in my mouth.

Today, I do not wish to be brave.

Today, I do not want poetry to rescue me.

I want the wound.

I want the ache to speak plainly,

to live in the marrow without metaphor.

So I rise,

and I adorn my crown of barbed wire.

Each thorn a vow.

Each sting, a syllable I cannot unwrite.

Let it press into my scalp,

draw its crimson truths.

Let me be queen of this grief,

dignified, unyielding,

radiant in my ruin.