I took a name meant for the dead
and refused to lay down beneath it.
An epitaph is supposed to be final..
a period etched in cold stone.
It is a clear ending, carved by witnesses
who will never know the full story.
Mine is unfinished.
Mine continues to bleed.
These songs are written in graveyard soil
during sleepless hours,
where ghosts rehearse memory
and the past refuses to rest in its shallow grave.
They are hymns for the melancholic,
for those silenced too early
that still manage to speak from the darkness.
I sing from the aftermath..
after the breaking,
after the erasure,
after the world decides what you are allowed to become
as you tear their verdict to shreds.
Every lyric is a tombstone, not a confession.
Here lies what survived hatred...
Here lies what would not die nor decompose...
Here lies a soul that perished numerous times
but continues to return with even sharper teeth.
Do not mistake this name for surrender.
I did not choose an epitaph to be remembered softly.
Nor to signify finality.
I have chosen it to write my own inscription,
while I am still breathing.
I chose it so as to claim my ending before it is taken from me.
I am here to haunt the narrative that tried to bury me alive.
This is not the grave.
This is the voice rising from within it.

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