Say It Before It Softens Poem by Pratikshya Satapathy

Let me spit venom
without having to sip it first.
Let me call out the names
of ghosts that live inside living people;

Let me say the sky is a cage,
and God forgot the key;
or worse, He watches.
Let me be a storm
and not apologize for the flood.
Let me confess
that I dream of burning bridges.
I want to unlearn obedience,
Bleed out my story
and not be told
to make it poetic.

There must be no witness,
be no act,
only the unbearable
precision of delay;
as if the universe,
in perfect clarity,
decided to continue
without consequence.