So listen.

My voice is not a mother’s. It is the crack in the chapel ceiling through which the rain seeps, dark and fertile. It is the whisper between the ribs of a dying fire—warm, corrupt, and patient. I will sing you a song that doesn’t put you to sleep, but wakes the part of you that sleeps wrong .

Sleep will not find you here. But something else will.

Close your eyes. Let the rhythm grind slow. Feel the rhyme break its own rules—stumble, linger, repeat where it shouldn’t. A lullaby is a promise of rest, but a lewd lullaby is a promise of ruin: soft, deliberate, and sung so close to your ear that you forget where my breath ends and your hunger begins.

Let the melody crawl. Let it find the hinge of your hip, the hollow behind your ear, the small of your back where shame has tucked its claws. This is not love. This is not even lust. This is the admission —that every gentle thing has a twin made of teeth and want. That the same hand which rocks the cradle has gripped the throat.

You wanted to be good. But good is a cage with a golden lock. Tonight, I hold the key, and it tastes of rust and honey.

The night is not for innocence. It never was.