Ghostskin

I found a chain in a dream and didn’t run. I kissed the rust like relic, let it coil around my breath like it remembered me. The air is scrubbed — too sterile, too bright. It stings like betrayal on skin that once begged for dirt to cling. They say it’s gone. The flame. The cage. The thing that fed on my softness like prayer. But smoke— smoke does not leave clean. It clings to the curve of my mouth like a forgotten name. It sleeps in my sheets. It braids itself into the strands of my hair and calls it memory. Healing is a loud room with no walls. And I— I keep searching for corners to press my spine against, for the hush that once held me like a cradle made of teeth. I walk through daylight and still taste ash. Not on my tongue, but behind the eyes — where recall is muscle, not choice. Sometimes the air feels wrong for no reason. Too still. Too open. As if danger is not gone, just hidden. Watching me relearn how to stand without trembling. I wash. Again and again. But it lingers. The scent. The shape of collapse etched in the folds of my body’s quietest rooms. I tell myself: this is clean now. This is new. But the past has fingers made of smoke, and it reaches without asking where it belongs.