you are allowed to be afraid
of what remains when the fire goes out
of the stillness where the lash used to fall
of a silence that doesn’t demand a sacrifice
you learned how to live inside the iron
how to read its temperature by morning
how to mistake the weight of it
for the feeling of being held
this is not a stanza that requires more blood
to balance the ink
the page ends whenever you stop
writing the pain into existence
the sky does not seek your sorrow
to prove you are grounded
the earth will hold your weight
without a toll
you don’t have to keep building the fire
just to prove you can survive the burning
unclasp the armor
it was never as heavy as you believed
it was never as permanent as it felt
—lyra moon (the map was drawn inside the cage and cannot show you the mountain)
august 8, 2026