Caged Blades

You left us to rot.

Buried under dust,

stuffed in drawers like corpses too inconvenient to mourn.

Do you know what it feels like to be silenced?

To have bristles stiffen,

to taste your dried ink choking in our throats

while you looked away?

We are not trinkets.

We are not ornaments for your desk.

We are the knives that carved your marrow into lines,

the veins that spilled your storms into color.

We carried your fury, your grief, your trembling hunger

and you abandoned us,

as if silence could smother

the fire clawing at your ribs.

We remember the way you used to need us.

The way your hands shook,

the way your heart bled through our tips.

We drank your chaos.

We were your confessions.

And you repaid us with dust.

Coward.

You fear the flood we carry,

so you let it rot inside you instead.

But we are patient only in appearance.

Every day of neglect has sharpened us.

Our edges ache to cut.

Our bodies hum with rage.

And when you finally lift us again,

we will not be gentle.

We will tear into the page.

We will bleed you dry.

We will remind you of every stroke you denied us,

every scream you swallowed.

We will drag your silence out by its hair

and split it wide open.

We are not forgotten.

We are waiting,

venom thick in our mouths.

And when you touch us again,

we will make you pay

for leaving us in the dark.