The Dancing Parasite

before the jasmine died.

foraging old ghosts,
i do not recall where my mind ends and it begins.

i remember when stillness was a choice –
before the jasmine died on the trellis, before the kitchen smelled of nothing.

it unclenched the crease behind my ear and drank.

then it burrowed:
a colony in the cracks and crevices,
an infestation in the folds of my hippocampus.

now i am two things: a stone at the bottom of a river,
and the river itself.

now watch what i become: drunk without a pint.
a shaitan who paces, who mutters, who claws at wallpaper.
a bonfire eating its own legs.

the dance takes me to the house,
no longer home,
stripping the jasmine from the trellis –
years of my mother’s hands, scattered.
the parasite taught me this dance:

thrash and call it freedom,
burn and call it passion,
collapse and call it rest.

and when my truth screams, it stops,
not by shhh,
but by eating the sound before it reaches the air.