Echoes in the Shadows

Echoes in the Shadows

My love is a dialect banned by law,
A map of veins the world calls a flaw.
I split myself: one half for their eyes,
The other a fire I smother to survive.

They name me sin, carve it into pulpits,
while I stitch my truth into hidden pockets
A note tucked in a locked drawer,
A laugh muffled before it hits the door.

Closets are countries we’re forced to flee.
My mother’s prayers can’t unmake me.
The mirror? A battlefield. My reflection,
A protest they’ll never silence completely.

Bodies like ours swing from gavels, not trees.
Prisons bloom where our joy should be.
We bury friends in unmarked soil,
grief a second skin, worn and loyal.

But we are dandelions in concrete cracks,
Whispers swelling to riots at their backs.
Every heartbeat here is a war drum’s cry
They write erase, we reply defy.

My love is a ghost they can’t unhaunt.
A child hears our echo, plants a seed in the dark.
Someday, they’ll bloom not in shadows, but in light.
We bend, but roots run deeper than their spite.