NaPoWriMo closes not with a crescendo, but with a quiet unraveling—language thinning, meaning dissolving into something colder, more observational. Today’s piece leans into that fracture. Inspired by the flattened, almost clinical tone of Russell Edsons poem, “Angels,” , this poem examines a figure that exists between service and shadow, between instinct and something far less human.
There is no declaration here. No identity spelled out.
Only gestures. Fragments. A presence moving through aftermath.
This is where Black Heart settles—no longer becoming, no longer resisting. Just functioning within the ruin, alongside something that never leaves.
Arioch does not speak loudly at the end.
He doesn’t have to.
The Last Language Is Silence
They move through the night as if cataloging it,
not belonging, not separate—just passing within it,
red light turning slow like a wound that won’t close,
a patient eye blinking over what everyone knows.
There are rituals here—gloved hands, measured air,
borrowed breaths given out like a desperate prayer,
the body lies still, already choosing release,
yet they kneel beside it, insisting on peace.
Pressure. Air. Rhythm. Repeat the refrain,
a choreography written in muscle and pain,
as if blood could be reasoned, persuaded to stay,
as if death might be argued, delayed for a day.
And I am that body—fractured, undone,
feeling pieces of self come loose, one by one,
the pavement beneath me drinks what I spill,
warm turning distant… then colder… then still.
Arioch stands there—not looming, not grand,
but placed in the absence where I used to stand,
his wings stretch behind him—dark fire and red,
dripping slow shadows the living can’t shed.
He watches in silence—no judgment, no claim,
just presence that settles and studies the frame,
not the dying he tracks, but the ones who resist,
those who battle the dark with a tightening fist.
A breath flickers in me—thin, not my own,
a fragile intrusion in marrow and bone,
Arioch leans closer—not mercy, not grace—
but interest in something not yet erased.
The siren calls out, but it’s distant, delayed,
like time being marked on a bargain half-made,
and somewhere within what remains of my soul,
a choice starts to form from the loss of control.
He does not command. He does not demand.
He waits in the silence I barely withstand—
and I feel him there…
not taking me—
but waiting
to be let in.
Thirty days.
Thirty poems.
Thirty glimpses into something I didn’t fully understand when I started.
NaPoWriMo began as a challenge—discipline, creativity, consistency.
But somewhere along the way, it became something else.
Darker.
More honest.
Less controlled.
Each poem peeled something back. Each line let something out—just enough to breathe, not enough to escape. And by the time I reached the end, I realized I wasn’t just writing poetry…
I was documenting something.
A fracture.
A presence.
A story that refused to stay contained.
That story has a name now.
Black Heart: The Darkness That Remains 🖤💔
This isn’t just a collection of poems.
It’s the beginning of something deeper—something that moves beyond prompts and into a narrative shaped by pain, survival, and the things that don’t leave once they’ve taken root.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be revealing pieces of it—
symbols, fragments, glimpses into what lives beneath the surface.
And now…
it begins.
Here is the official cover reveal for
Black Heart: The Darkness That Remains 🖤🔥
