Allen B. McGinnis

I carved a mirror from the night,

polished it with every flaw 
I tried to hide.


It showed me bones I'd borrowed,

names I'd wear like masks,

and the quiet truth,

I buried beneath borrowed light.

Progress is a funeral of my old self,
I light the pyre,

watching the false skin blister and curl,
collapsing into embers
,
that whisper who I used to be.

In the smoke,
I choke on shadows,

that once felt like home.


I inhale them anyway,

let them stain my lungs,

until I recognize the taste

of the person I feared to become.

In the dark,
I found the versions of me
that never learned to die.

Circling like starving wolves,
wearing my old smiles
as if they were trophies.

Every step forward drags a ghost,

every lesson draws blood.


Self-discovery is dissection,
and I am both the surgeon
and the corpse.

Yet somewhere in the wounds,

a pulse returns slow and stubborn,

but mine.

I rise from my own ruin,

not clean,
not redeemed,

but aware.

The darkness that shaped me,

now walks beside me,

no longer a monster,

but a mirror I finally learned to face.

Self-improvement is a ritual,
and I am its latest creature.

Don't disappear for me
,
just come closer.

I don't want your light dimmed,

I want it on my skin.


Keep your wild, your hunger,

your pulse that doesn't wait for permission.

I want to feel it
against my breath,
beneath my hands,

a rhythm that doesn't end where I begin.

I'm not here to quiet you.

I want your chaos to meet mine,

to crash, to spark,

to find that perfect edge where control dissolves

but the truth stays intact.


Your fire,
my fire
,
not surrender,

but ignition.

Let's not blend until we blur,
Let us collide until we bloom.

I want to know your soul by the way you move,

The way you look at me when words fall useless.

Bring it all,

Keep who you are,
And together,

let's burn the world into something new.