THE WORTH BENEATH
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By Jenni Thorne
Dig. Dig deeper.
Not with hands, but with the hunger
that consumes its host,
with the black-toothed maw of want
that tears at flesh without restraint.
Do not fear the deep.
Gold is not for you, no riverbed glitter,
those pallid flakes that catch the sun for shallow hearts.
You seek the pressure-born scream,
the jewel that bites through silence,
that learns its name in pain.
Gouge deeper. Deeper still.
Like time forgot your shape,
like the earth owes you a blood debt.
Something waits below, I promise.
My promise.
A whispered vow to the dirt.
Take your pickaxe and strike me open.
Split me like a prayer gone sour.
Drill through the marrow’s last deceit.
There is a centre, somewhere,
a black diamond,
a twitching truth that will not die.
Rip out the muscle that beats too loud.
It hums of mercy and shields the rot.
Throw it to the crows,
those winged accountants of the dead.
Boil the bones and listen as they soften,
as they confess in bubbles.
Sift the sludge for what endures,
a shard, a glint, a pulse of worth
that drowned but did not yield.
Delve until the silence howls,
until the dark folds in on itself.
There must be something.
A relic. A truth.
A fragment of worth in the wreckage.
Dig until the silence answers back,
until the dark gives you its name,
until you find
what I never could.