The sky over Hyde Park snarls,
a pewter blade lodged beneath my nails.
I am the pinnacle,
tethered to the world’s raw nerve,
clutching the spike—
a crucifix fashioned from my own ruin.

 

Below, the concrete stretches wide,
a silver grin, hungry for my plummet.
And I plummet—
oh, how the air tears itself apart
as I fall through its ribcage.

​

But death wavers.
The ground splits open,
swallowing me whole.

​

Black…
Not the velvet of sleep,
but a void—
wet, breathing, alive.

​

My eyes flutter open
to a world that pulses,
a tunnel lined with slick, throbbing walls.

​

Waxwork men in scarlet coats
drip and march,
arteries carved into the earth’s flesh.
Their wheelbarrows overflow with letters,
scrawled in a language of veins
I’ll never know.

​

Each step I take echoes
like a pulse beneath my feet.
I turn left—
the rhythm falters.

​

A bar emerges,
oozing from the dim light,
its walls sweating shadows thick as tar.
The soldiers rest here,
swaying beneath flickering bulbs,
a pool table striped with black and blood.

​

Their chatter stumbles,
falls silent.
The jukebox screeches,
a needle slicing through my spine.

​

They turn as one,
their eyes—
polished razors slicing the gloom.

​

“You’ve no business here,”
the barman growls,
a pint glass cradled in his hand like a skull.
I shake my head,
my breath caught like a moth in a jar.

​

“No,” I whisper.

​

His smile sharpens,
a crescent moon cutting through the dark.
“You don’t know who we are, do you?” he says,
his voice thick, bitter as iron.
“You’re our master,
and we are your blood cells.”

​

And suddenly, I see:
their lives coursing through the rivers of my blood,
their toil marking the walls of my veins
like footprints in sand.

​

They move without question,
a tide that knows no rest—

​

I breathe in the air,
sharp and bracing,
its metallic tang filling my lungs
with something that feels like reckoning.

​

The tunnel whispers,
pulling me backwards,
my veins vibrating with a rhythm
older than memory,
each thrum a reminder
of what I still carry.

​

The soldiers chant—
not a dirge, but a call.
The workers rise,
their burden suddenly weightless.

​

And somewhere deep
within the machinery of my flesh,
I find myself standing before
the ruins of my throne,
not mourning,
but tracing the cracks with my hands,
my fingers finding places to rebuild.

​

Because isn’t this what we all do?
Break, falter,
collapse under the weight of ourselves—
and then, somehow,
rise.

​

The kingdom may never be whole again,
but it will live,
and I will sit among its ruins,
as the Queen of Insecurity.