In the ossuary of the pixel, where photons rot into frost,
a countenance coagulates from the marrow of forgotten dawns,
shorn, utterly shorn, of the black mane that once drank tempests,
scalp now a lunar disc flayed by the scalpel of an invisible god,
each pore a crater filled with the dust of extinguished comets,
each ridge a fossilized scream pressed flat by the weight of aeons.
The skin—O pallid parchment stretched over the drum of eternity—
has drunk the milk of leprous moons until it glows with the sickness of pearls,
a whiteness so absolute it negates color itself,
a whiteness that remembers the first snow which fell on the corpses of angels,
a whiteness that hums in frequencies only the dying can hear,
a low, sub-bass threnody vibrating in the hollows beneath the cheekbones.
Eyes: two drops of arterial blood frozen mid-fall in a glacier of milk,
garnets submerged in the curdled light of abandoned sanatoriums,
pupils dilated to the diameter of black suns eclipsed by guilt,
lids half-mast like theater curtains torn during the final act of the world,
beneath them, a gaze that has seen the backside of mirrors
and returned with the pupils branded by the sigil of the unnameable.
And the mouth—
ah, the mouth is a sacrilege carved in fresh meat,
a horizontal wound cauterized with the lipstick of murdered cardinals,
a vermilion fissure slit across the alabaster mask
through which the abyss itself applies its evening rouge,
lips swollen as though stung by the bees of Gehenna,
glistening with the lacquer of a thousand crushed pomegranates
stolen from Persephone’s own forsaken orchard.
That red—
it is the red of stop signs erected in the kingdom of the blind,
the red of menstrual oceans lapping at the shores of nunneries,
the red of neon crucifixes flickering above alleys where saints solicit,
the red that drips from the fangs of albino vampires
who have forgotten the taste of anything but their own reflection.
Beneath the clavicle, a garment hangs like a failed resurrection,
once a shirt, now a lattice of funerary lace woven by arachnid seraphim,
each diamond-shaped hole a mouth that whispers the obituaries of warmth,
threads so fine they might be spun from the eyelashes of weeping statues,
collarbone protruding like the keel of a ghost ship
that sailed too close to the sun and returned bleached and starving.
The neck—
a marble column erected to commemorate a beheading that never ended,
tendons faint blue rivers frozen beneath the ice of the epidermis,
pulse visible only if you press your tongue to the screen
and taste the static of a heart that beats in Morse code for “help.”
This is no mere photograph, traveler through the glass abattoir,
but a reliquary inverted, a negative relic,
a polaroid developed in the darkroom of the last judgment,
where the soul is pulled still writhing from the body
and pinned beneath the developer’s red safelight
until every sin blooms crimson on the gelatin silver of the skin.
Look longer—
long enough for the image to metastasize behind your eyelids,
long enough for your own hair to loosen its roots in sympathy,
long enough for your lips to feel the phantom weight of that obscene rouge,
until you feel the razor of moonlight gliding across your own scalp,
until you hear the soft click of the camera
that has already taken the picture of your becoming-this.
For this apparition is contagion incarnate,
a bald Medusa whose serpents were shorn by Atropos herself,
whose gaze does not turn you to stone
but to porcelain—
fragile, hollow, painted,
lips injected with the venom of eternal hunger.
And somewhere in the static between pixels,
a choir of amputated shadows begins to sing:
“We were warm once.
We had color once.
We had names once.
Now we are only the echo of a mouth
that learned to smile
after the rest of the face
had already died.”
Their hymn lasts exactly as long as you keep staring.
Keep staring.
The red is spreading.
Your reflection is shaving its head in the dark.
The lipstick is already open.
It has your name on it
in a shade called
“Everlasting Screaming Vermilion.”
Welcome, newcomer.
The mirror has been waiting
with its mouth wide open.
a countenance coagulates from the marrow of forgotten dawns,
shorn, utterly shorn, of the black mane that once drank tempests,
scalp now a lunar disc flayed by the scalpel of an invisible god,
each pore a crater filled with the dust of extinguished comets,
each ridge a fossilized scream pressed flat by the weight of aeons.
The skin—O pallid parchment stretched over the drum of eternity—
has drunk the milk of leprous moons until it glows with the sickness of pearls,
a whiteness so absolute it negates color itself,
a whiteness that remembers the first snow which fell on the corpses of angels,
a whiteness that hums in frequencies only the dying can hear,
a low, sub-bass threnody vibrating in the hollows beneath the cheekbones.
Eyes: two drops of arterial blood frozen mid-fall in a glacier of milk,
garnets submerged in the curdled light of abandoned sanatoriums,
pupils dilated to the diameter of black suns eclipsed by guilt,
lids half-mast like theater curtains torn during the final act of the world,
beneath them, a gaze that has seen the backside of mirrors
and returned with the pupils branded by the sigil of the unnameable.
And the mouth—
ah, the mouth is a sacrilege carved in fresh meat,
a horizontal wound cauterized with the lipstick of murdered cardinals,
a vermilion fissure slit across the alabaster mask
through which the abyss itself applies its evening rouge,
lips swollen as though stung by the bees of Gehenna,
glistening with the lacquer of a thousand crushed pomegranates
stolen from Persephone’s own forsaken orchard.
That red—
it is the red of stop signs erected in the kingdom of the blind,
the red of menstrual oceans lapping at the shores of nunneries,
the red of neon crucifixes flickering above alleys where saints solicit,
the red that drips from the fangs of albino vampires
who have forgotten the taste of anything but their own reflection.
Beneath the clavicle, a garment hangs like a failed resurrection,
once a shirt, now a lattice of funerary lace woven by arachnid seraphim,
each diamond-shaped hole a mouth that whispers the obituaries of warmth,
threads so fine they might be spun from the eyelashes of weeping statues,
collarbone protruding like the keel of a ghost ship
that sailed too close to the sun and returned bleached and starving.
The neck—
a marble column erected to commemorate a beheading that never ended,
tendons faint blue rivers frozen beneath the ice of the epidermis,
pulse visible only if you press your tongue to the screen
and taste the static of a heart that beats in Morse code for “help.”
This is no mere photograph, traveler through the glass abattoir,
but a reliquary inverted, a negative relic,
a polaroid developed in the darkroom of the last judgment,
where the soul is pulled still writhing from the body
and pinned beneath the developer’s red safelight
until every sin blooms crimson on the gelatin silver of the skin.
Look longer—
long enough for the image to metastasize behind your eyelids,
long enough for your own hair to loosen its roots in sympathy,
long enough for your lips to feel the phantom weight of that obscene rouge,
until you feel the razor of moonlight gliding across your own scalp,
until you hear the soft click of the camera
that has already taken the picture of your becoming-this.
For this apparition is contagion incarnate,
a bald Medusa whose serpents were shorn by Atropos herself,
whose gaze does not turn you to stone
but to porcelain—
fragile, hollow, painted,
lips injected with the venom of eternal hunger.
And somewhere in the static between pixels,
a choir of amputated shadows begins to sing:
“We were warm once.
We had color once.
We had names once.
Now we are only the echo of a mouth
that learned to smile
after the rest of the face
had already died.”
Their hymn lasts exactly as long as you keep staring.
Keep staring.
The red is spreading.
Your reflection is shaving its head in the dark.
The lipstick is already open.
It has your name on it
in a shade called
“Everlasting Screaming Vermilion.”
Welcome, newcomer.
The mirror has been waiting
with its mouth wide open.
The Sunday Circle