In the salt of hours and steel of breath, we carve no blessings into the dark. We burn no incense for the paper gods, we kneel to nothing that asks us to smile. No halo. No hymn. No promise. They sell the wound in polished glass, they dress the void in velvet words. They call it “real” and raise it high, so nobody sees what it can’t hold. We keep our hands unclean on purpose, we keep our voices rough and bare. Not to be sacred— to be honest in the air. No halo. No hymn. No promise. Bring no confession for the crowd. Bring no performance, no “rise above.” Bring what you carry when the room turns cold, when even comfort feels like fraud. No bright key to turn this into meaning. No soft light to make it kind. Only the weight of what is real and the hard edge of the mind. No halo. No hymn. No promise. Salt under tongue. Ash on the palms. A threshold made of days we can’t get back. We don’t ask the dark for mercy— we ask it to stay black. So step in, not to be saved, not to be seen. Step in to name the thing that never leaves. No halo. No hymn. No promise. No halo. No hymn. No promise. Nothing offered. Nothing sold. Only what holds.
