Hands Red With The Letters
Under the ashtray moon, pages curl like tongues—
I wrote you secrets in blood, my pulse my crime.
Nails split, skin gritted raw, paper tearing
as if the script itself recoils.
Each word stings, each rhyme bites—
no forgiveness, just the color of want,
of old wounds.
You read me like an autopsy, slow and brutal,
fingers tracing letters while my flesh goes numb.
Nothing left of trust but the red script
crawling over your skin.
The print of my touch already drying to rust
as you whisper my sins back in reverse.
I learned long ago that love is what’s written
when hope is too soft for the page.
It takes blood to tell the truth,
sweat to remember,
spit to survive the retelling.
And every sentence is a memory
you can taste on your teeth.
Red ink pooling at the corners of your mouth
as you swallow the parts of me I’d rather forget.
I gave you a warning, not a story—
every line a knife, every verse a scar.
I tried to keep it quiet,
tried to write you a happy ending in the dark,
but the letters dripped down, thick and feral,
spelling out everything I never said sober.
Now you hold the sheet against your bare chest,
heart hammering,
skin smeared with proof.
And it’s not the shame that ruins us,
not the madness, not the rot—
it’s the sound of your voice.
There are things only wounds can write,
and I penned them all:
names, dates, apologies I’d never repeat.
You know the truth by touch, by taste,
by the smear on your breast.
We’re both the villain here—
your hand smudged in crimson,
my tongue licking secrets from your trembling wrists.
Outside, the world keeps its blue-cold calm,
but in this locked room, we’re animals.
Hungry. Shivering. Ruined by the stories we can’t erase.
I wrote you in blood
since nothing less would survive the night.
And now, when the paper sticks to your thigh,
when the sheets are ruined,
you’ll remember:
Love never dries.
Not when the ink is still warm.
Not when the pen was a knife.
Not when the letters are carved deep.
We are what we’ve written,
red-handed and unrepentant,
reading ourselves aloud
by the throb of what we lost.
—
Furred Demons
They watch from rafters,
curled in soft shadow,
eyes bright as headlights on a slaughterhouse night.
Their fur matted—each strand a dirty memory,
twitching with hunger
and the somewhat longing that never looks away.
They crawl between cracks in the ceiling,
between planks that once held up a family—
now warped by rot,
now the stage for their slow midnight parade.
Every flicker of their tails sends dust drifting,
the way old secrets drift through air,
thick as incense,
sweet as spoiled fruit in the mouth of a sinner.
Night is endless here,
thick as grave dirt.
Somewhere outside, sirens are singing—
but not for me,
not for anyone inside this nest
of gnawed bones and crawling guilt.
Every whisper from the heating vents
is a warning,
a laugh,
a memory of hands that held you once,
now gone cold—
those hands become paws,
soft at first, then biting.
You breathe too loud.
Your breath a signal flare
in a city of things that hunt by sound.
They circle you,
tails snaking,
whiskers twitching—
those red little mouths
singing lullabies
in a language only fear understands.
Your pillow smells of sweat and regret,
soaked through from nights spent bargaining with shadows,
promising you’ll be good
if the teeth just keep away.
They don’t.
They never do.
Not in this house.
Not when the wallpaper peels back like dead skin.
Not when the clock stops at 3:03.
You remember a mother’s voice,
gentle as rain,
then rough as the edge of broken glass,
telling you monsters aren’t real—
but mothers lie,
and monsters breed in truth’s absence.
You want to scream,
but the scream won’t come.
Your mouth full of fur.
Your lungs heavy with hair
and the unchanging stink of bodies pressed too close.
Every heartbeat is an invitation.
Every shiver a plea.
They know your prayers by heart,
know the rhythm of fear
that thunders just beneath your flesh.
You bargain again—
with God, with devils, with the dust—
promise to give them anything but yourself.
But there’s nothing left to give but yourself.
They crawl inside your chest,
wear your skin,
learn your name,
purr your secrets to the pipes.
And morning—
when it comes, if it comes—
doesn’t chase them off.
It just shows you in the mirror:
A tangle of fur,
and claws,
and teeth,
and love gone so hungry
it learned to hunt itself.