Between Bruises & Blooms

I tell myself
one more chapter.

As if I have ever meant it.

As if sunrise
hasn't caught me
hundreds of pages
from where midnight
left me.

The house goes quiet.

The children sleep.

The cats curl themselves
into warm commas
around the dark.

And I leave.

Not through the front door—

that door
has always asked
too much of me.

I leave through pages.

Through forests
where cats divide the stars
and grief has nine lives.

Through courts
made of moonlight
and beautiful monsters.

Through kingdoms
burning beneath
women who finally learned
how powerful
their anger could become.

Through dragons
and rebellions,
vampires
and prophecies,
wars that have absolutely
nothing to do with me.

That is the point.

For a few hours
I do not have
appointments.

Messages.

Memories.

A body
that refuses to sleep.

A mind
that refuses
to shut the fuck up.

I only have
the next chapter.

Someone else's heartbreak.

Someone else's war.

Someone else's world
to survive.

And sometimes
I think

maybe this is why
I read until morning—

because disappearing
into fiction

is the closest
I have ever come

to turning myself off
without actually
having to leave.