Photo by Yener Ozturk on Unsplash
Surprise surprise,
what's the price?
Suppose you lied, suppose
the scars bring you pride
because they display your fight against life
&,
since there's no shadow without light,
no death without life,
you fought life & death &
you survived.
Suppose, suppose you
posed like
the question came as a surprise - why
not try to act like you don't know
what made you
strip naked & run screaming
into the abandoned building
licking flakes of old paint from walls bleeding cold
skin:
petals on the floor lost to rot
and decaying fray-
ing & ignored, what
does the paint taste like, why
did you decide to stop when
the dirt-black sky
ran to hide from the bleeding sun that never dies?
Suppose,
suppose you only wanted to try & fall
suppose that you never meant it at all.
Cj Delous is a working-class poet from the UK, and they write under the gender-neutral pseudonym CJ Delous, to preemptively kill the author so you don't have to. Their first published work is due to be included in the December edition of Tempered Runes Press, and they have also self-published a small chapbook of poetry and artwork called Words for Ghosts with the aid of an arts grant, to raise money for a local mental health charity. The book can be found at www.wordsforghosts.com/book.