READ RECEIPT
— how harm survives by calling itself polite

Some harms do not announce themselves.
They RSVP.
They read the message.
They respond later.

Written in the vein of what survives by being called polite.

@thistooisholy #stonewitnessed #writingprompts #fridaythe13th #writingcommunity

AU REVOIR
—goodbye to all that glitters

i taught a farewell to hold gold in its mouth.
seventy-nine lines — the metal chose the number.
under each stanza, coin-wise, one word waits.
dig, weirdos.

#thistooisholy #stonewitnessed

THE STAIN THEY COULDN’T CLEAN
— joy, misfiled as survival

Joy isn’t light here.
It’s what refuses erasure.

A garnet-cut piece for Voices in Stone—
joy as defiance, residue, forbidden shine.

#stonewitnessed @thistooisholy #voicesinstone #thistooisholy #poetrychallenge #poetryprompts #justatry🙈

(Mg,Fe)₂SiO₄

I wrote the night in four elements. magnesium, my godless sacrament. iron, the old smithy in my blood. silicon, the sand we schooled into speech; it graduated into lying. oxygen: every amen is breath in costume. no eyelids. it kept the vigil no one asked for. #StoneWitnessed

INTERVALENCE
— no impurity makes blue alone

A perfect crystal is colorless.
Perfection has nothing to say.

Blue is two flawed things in one lattice,
and one electron that stops coming home.

There is a word missing from all nine stanzas.
On purpose.

#thistooisholy #StoneWitnessed #poetry

THE ONLY ORGAN THAT KEPT ITS APPOINTMENT
— a first-person post-mortem of sight

"They will expect a heart.
They will find an archive."

"The eye was the only organ that kept its appointment. Everything else in me merely lived."

#thistooisholy #stonewitnessed #darkpoetry #juleyeprompts

PROBATE
— the thirty-ninth year, closing

Somewhere a list is kept of estates nobody came forward to claim. It is alphabetical, which is the only order anyone ever gave them.

For the names on that list, and the ones who intend to be.

#thistooisholy #StoneWitnessed