never just human

it did not knock. it poured through the cracks— in dreams, in fever, in the silence between my inhale and forgetting. i didn’t summon it. didn’t pray. didn’t kneel beside any sacred thing. but something sacred knelt inside me. without warning. without language. without mercy. it came wrapped in ash and static. my ears rang for three days. my limbs forgot gravity. my mouth opened and nothing human came out. i thought it was madness. who else speaks in a language made of shadow and silver? who else writes their name across your spine in molten syllables that blister and bless you at the same time? i told no one. not when the wind called me by my name, or when clocks began to stutter at my every glance. i saw feathers in my soup, salt forming symbols on my thighs, eyes in mirrors that blinked when i did not. my heartbeat no longer belonged to my body. it belonged to something older. something watching. i wept in a supermarket aisle because the oranges glowed like lost suns. because the cashier had the voice of my great-grandmother even though she was barely twenty. because i could feel the ache of every fruit picked too early. is this what prophets felt? not holy— but hunted by light too wild to hold. i wanted to run. to scrape the stars off my skin. to sleep without dreaming. but you cannot close the door once the veil lifts. i was touched by spirit not gently— but like a storm that mistook my bones for a bell. it rang me until i remembered i was not flesh alone. i was veil. i was vessel. i was volcano. i was every scream the earth had swallowed in women who were burned for hearing too much. it stripped me of logic, of maps, of language. left me naked in the forest of myself where no compass worked. only instinct. only breath. only the hum that lived beneath my ribs and now spoke back. and whether it was fiction or fact— i no longer cared. the stars in my blood said yes. the moon inside my mouth said remember. the fire in my marrow said that i was never just human. And that was enough.