The years drag their rusted nails across my skin,
marking me older,
but never carrying me forward.
My body keeps count of the birthdays,
stacks them like gravestones,
while somewhere beneath my ribs
a child sits motionless,
knees pulled to her chest,
waiting for light that never shines.
I think my heart is rotting.
Not all at once.
Nothing so merciful.
It spoils the way fruit does—
first a bruise,
then a soft place,
then another.
Dark spots bloom beneath the flesh,
hidden until a finger presses too hard
and sinks straight through.
Too many hands have held it.
Too many hands have squeezed and tested,
wondering how much pressure it could bear.
Now it gives way at the slightest touch.
The skin remains intact,
but inside,
everything has turned to sweetness and ruin.
Sometimes I imagine cutting it open.
Not to save it.
Only to see how much blackness has spread.
To measure the mold.
To know whether there is any red left beneath the decay,
or if I have been carrying a corpse inside my chest
all these years.
The worst part is that I can feel it happening.
I can feel myself softening where I should have hardened,
withering where I should have grown.
The world calls this surviving,
but survival has begun to resemble decomposition.
I remain upright,
I continue breathing,
yet some essential thing has already fallen from the branch
and lies hidden in the grass,
slowly feeding the earth.
And still the seasons pass.
Winter.
Spring.
Summer.
Autumn.
The tree grows rings around its wounds.
The river carves deeper into stone.
Children become adults.
But I remain here,
aging without arriving,
a piece of fruit forgotten on the counter,
watching the sunlight move across the room,
wondering whether I am ripening
or simply dying
at a pace slow enough
for everyone to mistake it
for life.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
romaincrisis
