You’ve seen enough bodies.
The flex, the filter,
the inventory of skin.
Here are the layers.
What lives within.
Here’s the mind.
No ring light.
No angle.
Draft and scar.
Before.
After.
During the dark.
From “Ugly heart.”
to “Wake mind.”
now "I am stone."
No bruises.
This stays.
The part that doesn’t flinch.
The part that chose risk
over surrender.
The part that writes back
when told “tone it down.”
Alive, so I write....
Welcome in.
— V.B