Tastes Like Rust

What did it feel like

when the first throat split open

and the warm, coppery scream

spilled over your fingers?

Did it shiver your bones,

or make them ache for more?

Whose laughter shredded first —

children ripped from the world like paper dolls?

Whose names were eaten by dust before they even knew themselves?

Did the silence claw at you,

or did it taste sweet in your mouth like iron?

What did the bones whisper

as they cracked beneath your boots?

Did the sound make your heart leap,

or did it gnaw at the edges of your soul

with teeth sharper than your own?

How many lives curl, wet and broken,

under the weight of your hands?

How many hearts spattered across walls,

how many faces ground into mud

before the taste of blood taught you pleasure?

Whose blood trickled into your pockets?

Whose eyes did you swallow with your greed?

Did the shadows watch,

did the walls tremble at the wet, sticky joy you claimed,

or did you think darkness belonged only to you?

Did you feel them —

the dead crawling in your spine,

their ice fingers carving knives into every rib,

their whispers splitting your chest

and laughing as it bled?

What did the hollow pit inside you taste like,

where shame used to writhe and scream?

Did it fill your mouth, your teeth, your stomach,

or only your dreams when the lights died?

When your eyes closed,

did you see them all?

The life crushed beneath your thumbs,

the screams you swallowed whole,

the coins ringing wet against skulls, 

or did you pretend innocence,

as if it were a cloak?

If the dead were counting,

if they were watching

every heartbeat, every gulp, every wet whisper of terror,

would you still lick the pleasures you thought were yours?

Would you still smile

while shadows dripped across your face,

clawing at the corners of your mind?

What happens

when the storm of eyes and whispers and laughter

floods your skull

and every bone, every coin, every wet crack of flesh

stares back at you,

and you are nothing but a stain

in the ledger of all they remember?

Will you taste it again,

and know it is not yours,

never yours, 

but theirs?

Do you even deserve it?

Does anyone?

And when the world sleeps,

and the dead lean closer,

will you still smile,

or will the storm finally swallow you whole,

gut you, skin you,

and leave only the echo of terror

ringing in the dark,

your own hands still wet,

your teeth still biting air,

and your mind,

your fragile, squirming mind,

trapped inside the carnival of the dead,

laughing at you

while you are nothing,

only carnage, only hunger, only guilt,

only the taste of blood that was never yours to take?