The Tithe of Tides
I stitched your names into the seams of sleep,
Where shadows whisper secrets I can’t keep.
The night became a chapel of your breath,
A sacred, suffocating hymn to death.
I lit my thoughts like candles in your name,
Each flicker feeding softly on the flame;
Anaphora of longing—you, you, you—
A prayer that burned the world until it’s through.
My heart, a drowning clock that will not cease,
Ticks tidal rhythms, begging you for peace.
But peace is foreign where your ghost resides—
A storm that blooms beneath my ribcage tides.
If to love you, I must drown—I cried,
And drank the depths where all my reason died.
A hyperbolic ocean filled my chest,
Where sanity sank slowly with the rest.
Your absence claws like ivy through my veins,
An anthropomorphic ache that grows with pains;
Each pulse a petal poisoned by your hue,
Each breath a borrowed moment spent on you.
I loved you louder than the world could bear,
A fleeting breath—no oxygen, just air
That never reached me, hollow, thin, and bleak,
A love so vast it made my spirit weak.
I carved your memory into every dawn,
‘Till even time forgot to travel on.
Obsession wore your face and called it fate,
And I—its willing martyr—learned too late.
Copyright © Adalyn Alcott | Year Posted 2026
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