I once lit candles in my mouth
to feel the wax confess;
heat tongues sear more truth than prayer.
Silence grew teeth.
I swallowed them whole.
There was a year I named my hunger
after rooms I wasn’t welcome in.
My mother said: Never let them smell the want.
So I stitched it
under the skin of my knees.
Kneeling became inheritance.
In mirrors, I practice absence:
this is how a body disappears,
not in violence,
but in the repetition of being ignored.
I have mistaken fists for familiars.
I have whispered mercy
into wrists I didn’t own.
What is survival
if not a practiced forgetting?
Tonight, I will write in salt.
I leave the page open.
I dare the blood to answer.
Nathan DeBar
Nathan DeBar is a poet and fiction writer from Leakesville, Mississippi. His short story "The Long Morning" was selected as Editor's Choice for Styx Papers Lit Mag in 2024. His poem "Manhattan Cafe" was published in Georgia Bards: Poetry Anthology 2025 in June. He has been or will soon be published in A Sufferer's Digest, The Solitude Diaries, Persephone Literary Magazine, Kaleido Zine, Floating Acorn Review, COOP: Chickens of Our Poetry, Tap into Poetry, and others. You can follow him and find links to all his published works on his Linktree and Instagram: @nate.debar.