Of Thresholds and Surrender

Content Warnings: mild gore

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Blood, sinew, and the hills alive with music.
You now crawl from a flesh spore and spill out onto grass,
Sunshine beholden to your arrival.

Air, good
Flowers, real

You were never much for morning glory
Tulips sang best topside as you lanced your last stab through.
The process was much like a birth,
Something that wound your insides into knots

Air, good
I’m good,
You bargain empty sky.

You’re greeted by a handful of pills rivering from the mouth you created.
You recognize them.
You need them.

If only,
if you could somehow put words to form the vegetation haunching,
Running like needles at your heels.
The formless walls,
their tendrils within them,
Chasing
If only

A deep hollow chasms through you
The further you walk
Your machete dulls before your eyes,
Corrodes,
The flat of the blade so opaque with blood
You can’t see your reflection.
Stepping off the esker was itself an affront to an oath
Once hooked into your heart.

The hills are alive.

You never could escape yourself.
How many would die so that you might live?

The hills are alive, and they’re coming for you.

Reluctant, you head back to brave the horrors
No one else could.