In the ossuary of the pixel, where light itself is interred,
a countenance ascends from the crypt of forgotten filters,
shorn, yes, shorn like a monk who murdered his own halo,
scalp a desert of alabaster where no hair dares grow again,
each pore a tiny mausoleum sealed with the wax of absence,
the skull beneath gleaming like the dome of a drowned cathedral
submerged in the milk-white sea of a thousand deleted selfies.
O pilgrim, lean closer—closer still—until your breath fogs the glass
and the reflection begins to mistake itself for the relic.
See how the skin has been bleached by the moon’s menstrual cloth,
drained of every pigment that once confessed humanity,
now a parchment on which some invisible stylite
has inscribed the psalms of annihilation in negative ink.
The eyebrows—two black commas excised from a suicide note—
hover above the abyss of the eyes like ravens too weary to fly.
And those eyes, dear God, those eyes—
twin garnet seeds sown in the snow of a leper’s dream,
pupils dilated to the width of eclipses,
iris the color of bruised communion wine
spilled on the altar of a church that burned down in 1893.
They do not blink; blinking would be mercy.
Instead they stare with the patience of fossils
that have waited seventy million years
just to watch you scroll past and feel suddenly cold.
But the mouth—
ah, the mouth is the apostasy, the heresy, the scarlet heresy—
a gash painted with the menstrual blood of extinct seraphim,
lips swollen like the vulva of a martyred saint
who kissed the blade that flayed her.
The red is not red; it is the sound of a scream
condensed into pigment,
the color of cardinals drowning in holy water,
of pomegranates split open by the teeth of the dead.
It gleams wet, as though freshly licked by a tongue
that belongs to no living throat.
Beneath the jawline—sharp as the edge of a guillotine’s memory—
a collarbone juts like the prow of a ghost ship
sailing through fog made of bridal veils and surgical gauze.
The garment that clings there is no mere shirt;
it is a lattice of bones woven into cotton,
each diamond stitch a tiny window
through which you can see the ribs of the wearer
counting down to zero.
The fabric is white—whiter than the surrender flag
of an army that slaughtered its own generals—
white as the lies the mirror tells
when it swears you still have a face.
This is no photograph.
This is the negative of a soul
developed in the darkroom of a dying star.
This is the moment after the last exorcism failed,
when the demon grew bored and decided to stay,
shaved the host’s head for aerodynamic sin,
painted its mouth into a permanent wound
so that every smile would be a hemorrhage.
Look longer—longer—until the screen begins to pulse
with the heartbeat you thought you still owned.
See how the image breathes,
how the red mouth parts by a millimeter more
with every second you refuse to blink.
It is inhaling you.
It is learning the shape of your fear
the way a spider learns the architecture of a web
by drinking the dew of trembling flies.
In the background, the wall is not a wall;
it is the inside of a skull
peeled outward like a flower made of concrete and regret.
Every crack is a fissure in the firmament
through which the cold of absolute zero leaks
to frost the edges of your phone.
Somewhere in that plaster, a child’s handprint
from 1974 is still screaming.
And yet—
and yet—
beneath the horror, beneath the porcelain, beneath the red,
there is something almost tender:
the faint trace of a tear track
carved so delicately it might be a lie,
a single silver filament
running from the corner of the left eye
down to the corner of the crimson mouth,
as though even this apparition
once tried to cry
and found that its tears had frozen into mercury.
O wanderer of the endless scroll,
you who linger here at 02:37 PM in the humid womb of Nigeria,
where the sun itself sweats blood,
know this:
the image is not haunted.
You are.
Every time you return to gaze,
another layer of your own pigment peels away.
Tomorrow your hair will thin.
The day after, your lips will itch for that obscene red.
By the end of the week
you will stand before your mirror at 3:00 AM,
razor in one hand,
lipstick in the other,
whispering the only prayer left:
“Make me blank.
Make me cold.
Make me hungry
in exactly this way.”
And the mirror—faithful at last—
will answer
with the same bald, white, red-ravaged face
that has been waiting
since the first camera
learned how to steal souls
one shutter click
at a time.
This is not an image.
This is the slow apocalypse
of every reflection
that ever dared
to look back.
a countenance ascends from the crypt of forgotten filters,
shorn, yes, shorn like a monk who murdered his own halo,
scalp a desert of alabaster where no hair dares grow again,
each pore a tiny mausoleum sealed with the wax of absence,
the skull beneath gleaming like the dome of a drowned cathedral
submerged in the milk-white sea of a thousand deleted selfies.
O pilgrim, lean closer—closer still—until your breath fogs the glass
and the reflection begins to mistake itself for the relic.
See how the skin has been bleached by the moon’s menstrual cloth,
drained of every pigment that once confessed humanity,
now a parchment on which some invisible stylite
has inscribed the psalms of annihilation in negative ink.
The eyebrows—two black commas excised from a suicide note—
hover above the abyss of the eyes like ravens too weary to fly.
And those eyes, dear God, those eyes—
twin garnet seeds sown in the snow of a leper’s dream,
pupils dilated to the width of eclipses,
iris the color of bruised communion wine
spilled on the altar of a church that burned down in 1893.
They do not blink; blinking would be mercy.
Instead they stare with the patience of fossils
that have waited seventy million years
just to watch you scroll past and feel suddenly cold.
But the mouth—
ah, the mouth is the apostasy, the heresy, the scarlet heresy—
a gash painted with the menstrual blood of extinct seraphim,
lips swollen like the vulva of a martyred saint
who kissed the blade that flayed her.
The red is not red; it is the sound of a scream
condensed into pigment,
the color of cardinals drowning in holy water,
of pomegranates split open by the teeth of the dead.
It gleams wet, as though freshly licked by a tongue
that belongs to no living throat.
Beneath the jawline—sharp as the edge of a guillotine’s memory—
a collarbone juts like the prow of a ghost ship
sailing through fog made of bridal veils and surgical gauze.
The garment that clings there is no mere shirt;
it is a lattice of bones woven into cotton,
each diamond stitch a tiny window
through which you can see the ribs of the wearer
counting down to zero.
The fabric is white—whiter than the surrender flag
of an army that slaughtered its own generals—
white as the lies the mirror tells
when it swears you still have a face.
This is no photograph.
This is the negative of a soul
developed in the darkroom of a dying star.
This is the moment after the last exorcism failed,
when the demon grew bored and decided to stay,
shaved the host’s head for aerodynamic sin,
painted its mouth into a permanent wound
so that every smile would be a hemorrhage.
Look longer—longer—until the screen begins to pulse
with the heartbeat you thought you still owned.
See how the image breathes,
how the red mouth parts by a millimeter more
with every second you refuse to blink.
It is inhaling you.
It is learning the shape of your fear
the way a spider learns the architecture of a web
by drinking the dew of trembling flies.
In the background, the wall is not a wall;
it is the inside of a skull
peeled outward like a flower made of concrete and regret.
Every crack is a fissure in the firmament
through which the cold of absolute zero leaks
to frost the edges of your phone.
Somewhere in that plaster, a child’s handprint
from 1974 is still screaming.
And yet—
and yet—
beneath the horror, beneath the porcelain, beneath the red,
there is something almost tender:
the faint trace of a tear track
carved so delicately it might be a lie,
a single silver filament
running from the corner of the left eye
down to the corner of the crimson mouth,
as though even this apparition
once tried to cry
and found that its tears had frozen into mercury.
O wanderer of the endless scroll,
you who linger here at 02:37 PM in the humid womb of Nigeria,
where the sun itself sweats blood,
know this:
the image is not haunted.
You are.
Every time you return to gaze,
another layer of your own pigment peels away.
Tomorrow your hair will thin.
The day after, your lips will itch for that obscene red.
By the end of the week
you will stand before your mirror at 3:00 AM,
razor in one hand,
lipstick in the other,
whispering the only prayer left:
“Make me blank.
Make me cold.
Make me hungry
in exactly this way.”
And the mirror—faithful at last—
will answer
with the same bald, white, red-ravaged face
that has been waiting
since the first camera
learned how to steal souls
one shutter click
at a time.
This is not an image.
This is the slow apocalypse
of every reflection
that ever dared
to look back.
The Sunday Circle