Wednesday, 1 October 2025

Leeches Keep The Dead Alive

There are fractions of days

when I swear

I could go to war with the world

in the first blink of a lazy eye.


Then comes the entirety

of the long remainder of those days

every breath

a dozen nails

hammered into lungs, ribs, intestines,

each inhale another haemorrhage.


Nights I’ve prayed

would split themselves open

and swallow me whole,

their darkness a softer death

than the hundred deaths inside my chest.


My need to die

feels sharper

than my hope of surviving life.

Yet life crawls back,

because my death

isn’t mine alone.


Because love is a lot like leeches

sycophant enough

to keep corpses breathing,

just to feel alive,

to convince itself it still lives

in the hollows of others.


These days

I can’t quite tell anymore

if I’m more helpless

in my hope of life

or in my hope of death.


Life doesn’t let me live.

Love doesn’t let me die.

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