anatomy of a soul (lost and rotting) _________________________ i. your eyes are deserted of the very flame that once devoured your soul—no light, no vivacity. the faint, flickering lights of the fireflies in the graveyard fail to illuminate your heart in the dead of night. grief has settled in your bones like dust in an abandoned chapel, savoring your pain, the soil bleeding with every word that spills out of your cracked, ashen lips. ii. there are orchards rotting in your silence, the once fleshy and ripe fruit brimming with a mouthwatering sweetness now nothing but pulp and carnage in the mouths of the crows that nest inside your ribs. they feast without pause, their beaks glossy with the taste of wet rot and remembrance, perching on the brittle branches of your withered intentions. iii. time drips like black sap from the fractured limbs of your yesterday, each drop hollowing your ruptured lungs, splintered breath. it is the whispers of a wandering soul—lost in the woods of decay—scattering embers that never settles. you choke on the jagged notes of your own lullaby; a discordant wailing that tears at the ruins beneath your pale wounds.