The armor, when it first came,
was stiff—unyielding as the bones of the dead,
a second body I didn’t ask for,
but now it bends with me,
its weight a familiar pressure,
like a hand on my shoulder
that’s always been there.
I’ve learned to breathe beneath it,
learned to forget the way it tightens,
as if it knows I’m not the man I should be.
They call me Sir—
as though the title could scrape the blood from my hands,
as though it could make the air lighter,
cleaner,
less thick with the smell of bodies,
rotting in the fields where we leave them.
But there’s no honor in this steel,
no grace in the way it crushes the air from my chest
each time I draw the sword
and watch the blade disappear
into someone else’s skin.
It is soft, their flesh—
softer than I expected,
the way it parts for the steel
like the earth opening for the dead.
They speak of kings and banners,
but I see only the red—
how it stains everything.
It follows me,
crawling through the cracks of my boots,
clinging to the edges of my cloak
like a stain that refuses to be washed away.
At night, I sleep in the woods,
away from the eyes that know too much.
The stars blink through the branches
as if they too have seen enough
of men splitting open like ripe fruit,
of mouths gasping for air that doesn’t come.
The wind whispers names I’ve forgotten,
but they remember me,
their voices circling like vultures
over the fields I’ve left behind.
In my dreams, I am unarmored,
bare-chested,
walking barefoot through the mud,
and the earth beneath me shifts—
wet, soft,
slick with something darker than rain.
I look down,
and the ground is crawling,
heaving with hands,
fingers clawing through the muck,
grasping at my legs,
pulling me down into their grave.
I try to run,
but the hands hold fast,
dragging me into their cold embrace,
flesh peeling beneath their grip.
I wake with their nails still in my skin,
feel their touch beneath my armor,
as if they’ve followed me here.
The weight of them,
the memory of their flesh,
presses in,
presses deep.
This morning, as I donned my helmet,
I found it—
a finger, lodged between the plates of steel,
its skin pale, wrinkled,
as though it had been clinging to life far too long.
I don’t remember how it got there.
I don’t remember the face it belonged to.
But it curled in my palm
like a secret,
like something I once knew but lost.
I tried to drop it,
tried to bury it beneath the soil,
but it clung to me,
its nails digging into the soft of my hand,
the way the dead always do—
refusing to let go.
By nightfall, I’ll ride again,
the sword heavy at my side,
the wind pulling at my cloak like a curse.
The armor will hold,
as it always does,
but beneath it,
there will be hands—
clawing, scratching,
tearing at the man who hides inside,
until nothing remains
but steel and silence.