The Ritual of the Tube

from the Archive of Nocturnal Initiations

I was not bathed.

I was delivered—

into the cold cradle of a tube 

where breath met stillness

and my arms locked like spell-bound chains.

The conveyor hummed with fate,

rolling me like a sacred relic

toward something unseen

but already known.

A man and a woman,

faceless but calm,

watched me with the silence of gods

who had done this many times before.

“You’ll feel an pinch,”

said the woman,

“at the back of your neck.

Then well done.”

Not pain.

Not cruelty.

A marking.

A keyhole.

A memory waiting to bleed.

And just as the needle kissed my spine,

I woke—

not in fear,

but in unfinished yearning

for the truth that lives

beneath skin.