i was an angel but they made me bleed | short poem
i wake on the cold stone floor,
chalk-white beneath the candle’s glare,
my body traced in salt and scripture,
veins split open, leaking psalms
i do not recall.
above me, the angels loom in judgment,
blindfolds stitched from woven light,
golden hands tarnished with rust and ruin,
wings spread wide, blotting out the sun.
i do not ask for mine.
i know where they are.
somewhere, they lie in ashes,
plucked clean, discarded like carrion,
the bones picked dry
by the mouths of the holy.
i remember the way i screamed —
for forgiveness, for mercy —
a sound that split the heavens,
a wail swallowed by the vaulted silence.
their hands did not tremble, tearing feathers
from flesh, peeling divinity from my spine
like a page ripped from the book.
take, kneel, bleed.
this is the ritual.
this is the way the faithful burn.
i have swallowed the world whole,
choked it down with iron and dust,
waited for it to bloom inside me,
but it only withers on my tongue.
the choir sings with ruined throats,
halos cracked, leaking oil and wax,
their hallelujahs thick as honey,
dripping from lips torn apart
by the weight of their own devotion.
i once stood among them.
feathers at my back, light in my bones.
now my shoulders are etched
with severed absence,
now my grace pools red at my feet.
outside, the bell tolls once,
twice —
a wound ripped into time,
a dirge carved into the sky.
it does not call for prayer.
it calls for sacrifice.
it calls for blood.
so i lift my hands to the altar,
palms open, wrists bare,
and i ask:
is this what You wanted?
is this how i am made clean?
the sky does not answer.
the angels do not weep.
only the knife speaks.
