kafka's boy

they asked

what makes you different from the men who hurt her?

i said

speak of her name and watch what becomes of me. watch how the boy folds - not in defeat, no - but in consecration. my knees kiss the earth the way saints once did before the gods forgot them. i press my hands together until they blanch, flesh tight with prayer, and bow my head so low it baptizes itself in dirt.

speak of her name and you'll hear the birds wail - jealous of how i stay caged in her gravity. their wings don't sing like mine do; mine sing for her and her alone. i could've flown. i stayed.

speak of her name and trace my marrow, how it's marked not with my own blood but hers - the sacred ichor of a woman too divine to bleed like a mortal. i bleed in her name like scripture.

speak of her name and you'll see it, finally - the difference. you'll see a man who doesn't run. you'll see someone who remains, even when it hurts to love her. even when it's a knife turned inward, slow and deliberate, and she's the hand pressing it deeper.

i used to laugh at kafka's ruin, how he bled love out like scripture. but now - god, now she's the prayer and i'm the pulpit splitting open from the sound of her name.

she is the hymn i tear from my throat, the sin i sing with praise. and i will go down loving her - like a heretic, like a fool, like a man on fire who thanks the match.

so, yes. speak of her name again.

call it a lie,

call it a curse,

call it divine,

it is all of those things

and as kafka said-

"that, my dear, is love."