The Unmaking

by Darwin

They dressed me in silence,

stitched my breath into a costume

and told me to live as their echo.

But silence rots.

It grows teeth in the dark

and gnaws at the marrow.

So I began to cut—

not the flesh,

but the story.

Every word they laid upon me,

I peeled away.

I learned that to be born

is also to destroy.

That love without recognition

is a coffin.

That God, if She exists,

waits only for those

who dare to arrive as themselves.

I have died once already.

And in the ruins of that death

I built a mouth,

a body,

a name.

Call me what you will.

I am not your dream.

I am the unmaking of it.