Brutal Night

 Brutal night.

And I’m out here

burying my body

in the bottom of a bar glass—

letting neon crawl up my arms

like it’s trying to own me.

The city is humming,

low and dirty,

breathing on my neck.

My throat—

my camel-dry, desert throat—

keeps swallowing

liters and liters and liters of

despair,

desperation,

desire

until I can’t tell

which one is burning me

from the inside.

Faces blur.

Hands reach.

Laughter breaks open like bottles.

Everything in this place

tastes like it wants something

from me.

I feel my hunger

pulled in every direction—

my loneliness dragged

across sticky floors

and dim corners where

nobody asks your name

because names

don’t matter here.

And me?

Buried body.

Distracted mind.

I can’t distinguish

suffering from pain anymore—

they’ve become the same animal,

chewing on the same bone

inside my chest.

This city—

God,

this city pretends to be

a kingdom of love without limits.

But its gates lead only to rooms

where hearts get pawned

for a little warmth,

a little forgetting,

a little lie.

Still—

I stand there,

at the very edge of the night,

under that white-glow sky,

waiting.

Waiting like a fool

for my angel to walk out of the dark

and touch my life

back into meaning.

I listen to my own heart—

its whisper,

its shake,

its tired, trembling beat.

A soul juddering.

A body barely holding the weight

of the breath inside it.

My veins—

they’re rivers tonight,

rushing toward something

I can’t name.

But then—

brutal night

does what brutal nights do.

It takes.

It steals.

It devours.

And somewhere in that white night,

my angel is bullied

by the darkness itself—

and I am left

breathless,

hollow,

standing in a city that does not care

how hard I loved.