99 Interlude: The Bone Orchard

from Three Moons in My Ribcage

There comes a stillness.
Not the end of madness,
but the point where madness no longer needs to howl.
Where the moons have stopped spinning
not because they are calm
but because they have found their orbit.

I walk now through the orchard of my own making.
Each bone beneath my feet a year I did not survive intact.
Each tree a memory I buried and watered with denial
until it bloomed in silence.

This is not peace.
Peace implies resolution.
This is equilibrium.
A truce between the screaming and the skin.
A moment when the body realises it has never been whole
and finally forgives itself for trying.

The air here is thick with echoes.
Laughter that never belonged to joy.
Weeping that belonged to no single event,
just a constant throb stitched into the marrow.
If I kneel, I can hear the past breathing.
Soft. Shallow. Disinterested in being remembered.

Here I do not speak.
The tongue is a crude tool in a place where the soul
has learned to whisper in leaves,
in dust,
in the way shadows curve around memory.

There are moons buried here too.
I know because the ground hums.
Because the trees lean slightly away from me
as if they remember who planted them.
As if they know I am both gardener and grave robber.

I have named nothing in this orchard.
Names are for the living.
These things deserve better.
They deserve to rot freely.
To be unmarked, unclaimed,
untouched by narrative or pity.

I sit.
I listen.
I breathe without begging.
And for the first time
the moons do not answer.

They are not gone.
They are simply watching
to see what I do with stillness.
To see if I will tear it apart,
or let it settle into me like new ribs.
Like a fourth moon.
Or a seed.

This is not the end.
This is the pause before everything burns clean.
The breath held before the final scream
turns into song.