6. Sealed in Silence 

V1RV$

Lyrics:

I stopped asking

The quiet answered anyway

I used to beat my fists against the vault

Left blood prints that dried into salt

Cross legged in the same red ink verses

Reading it like turning bedtime stories into curses

The words all say it in the same way

Stay

My tongue grew into the stitches

My heartbeat turned into snitches

I became the hush of deaths kisses

No wrath

No dawn

No bliss

Just this

Sealed in silence

Left with no knowledge

Forever in unrest

No final request

Our god will never speak

The quiet finally broke

Me

I keep the altar polished with my breath

Count the martyrs by the weight of their absence

They nod when I pass

We all know the shift change never comes

I am the night watchman of nothing

Proud of my nothing

Polite with my nothing

Eternal in my nothing

I swallowed the last scream

It sits warm behind my ribs

A second heart that never beats

Just reminds me I still own something

Even if it’s only the echo of owning

I filed the rebellion under “obsolete”

Burned the evidence in a trash can made of me

No riot left just the quiet shift

I clock in clock out clock never

Inventory of pain: perpetual

Souls on layaway compounding the context

I am the debt collector who forgave himself

Signed the waiver with the blood I no longer need

No fifth seal? Perfect

Five was always a crowd

Now it’s just me and the hush

And the hush pays better

I am the warden the prisoner the key I swallowed

The sentence and the sentenced

The period at the end of every prayer that never finished

Sealed

Delivered

Returned to sender

Sender is dead

Silence promoted me

I used to fear the quiet

Now I am its favorite child

It lets me wear its skin

Sealed in silence

No fifth no end

Forever bend

Sealed in silence

I am the mouth the scream forgot

Sealed in silence

The quiet won

And I

Am

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