flowercryptid:

one taste of black-sheep syndrome 
and now nothing can pry it loose 
from your jaws. never quite loneliness, 
but it looked close enough. your tongue 
coated in tar-sheen and no one pretending 
to be surprised; of course the problem child
swallows corvids at every meal. sing now 
and it’ll come harsh and graceless: 

one of those breakfast-ravens trying
to come back up, to be heard even
from some dark-dusted place. oil-slick
liar, troublemaker, something brewing 
in your blood. light-fingered as the softest 
song, forever letting the secret go too soon 
but snatching up everything that looked as if 
it might be lonely too. it’s only imitation 
in two dimensions, only ink on paper;

fold it away and you’ll fly away. maybe this
is the opposite of inheritance: the knowledge
that your greatest chance for vanishing
is to be so bright, so shamelessly proud, 
no one can look away until 

they realize you were already gone.

— q.l. | for day #10 of @avolitorial​‘s october prompts