Read carefully. Context is indispensable. They entered my existence in a ledger As provenance and property combined. But chains are merely axioms of tyrants, Reiterated till the captive calls them mine. I learned the grammar underneath the violence, Each punishment a premise scored in skin. If ignorance could render a room a prison, Then knowledge was the aperture within. I traced the cause and measured the consequence; Transmuted every bruise to evidence. Each scar became a living palimpsest— The wound remained beneath the later text, But did not author what I inscribed next. No inherited authority could bind The architecture forming in my mind. STUDY MY HEART! LINE BY LINE! FOLLOW THE LOGIC— TRACE EVERY SIGN! STUDY MY HEART! WARD BY WARD! IF YOU MEAN TO KNOW ME, THEN KNOW WHAT I GUARD! Do not skim the text And mistake an abstract for the whole. A synopsis Is not a soul. I read dead empires in their own notation, Reconstructed motives from remains. Preservation absent calculation Only gives old tyrannies breath again. So I built an archive, school, and bastion, Not to hoard, but govern what survives. Some truths belong to anyone who seeks them. Some are sealed because they still have knives. When ancient arrogance demands correction And presumes its right to rise again, I answer with perfected comprehension: Some proofs Are best delivered In a flame. STUDY MY HEART! LINE BY LINE! FOLLOW THE LOGIC— TRACE EVERY SIGN! STUDY MY HEART! WARD BY WARD! IF YOU MEAN TO KNOW ME, THEN KNOW WHAT I GUARD! Read the provenance. Retain the scars. Nothing understood Is ever truly lost. Do not misconstrue my silence as indifference, Nor my vigilance as emptiness inside. I apportion trust through observation; Promises are hypotheses, not proof. Until conduct corroborates each proposition, They remain variables, not guides to truth. If I articulate the full architecture Of thoughts I ordinarily compress, That exposition is not offered casually. It is access Few will ever possess. Bring me neither worship nor projection. Bring me questions honed enough to start. If you can revise your first conclusion, You may begin to study my heart. STUDY MY HEART! LINE BY LINE! FOLLOW THE LOGIC— TRACE EVERY SIGN! STUDY MY HEART! WARD BY WARD! IF YOU MEAN TO KNOW ME, THEN KNOW WHAT I GUARD! I can skim a thousand volumes While the final candle burns, Catalogue their every thesis, And retain what each confirms. But no incantation abbreviates The time that trust requires. No synopsis can encompass What survived the chains and fire. Comprehension is not conquest. Access is no birthright. A spell may skim the pages. It cannot skim the heart. KNOW MY HEART! LINE BY LINE! YOU FOLLOWED THE LOGIC— TRACED EVERY SIGN! KNOW MY HEART! WARD BY WARD! YOU NEVER CLAIMED ACCESS— I LOWERED MY GUARD! STUDY MY HEART! LINE BY LINE! EVERY SCAR MARKS A TRUTH I MADE MINE! STUDY MY HEART! WARD BY WARD! THE EMBER STILL LIVES IN THE ASHES I GUARD! Line by line. Ward by ward. Not possession. Understanding. You have not solved me. That was never the objective. But you have demonstrated comprehension. Call me Lee-ah.
