The dirt learns my name

Trigger warning- direct and indirect mentions of blood, gore.
(quiet)
I did not find the door.
It found me.
Green stone, damp with breath.
Moss thick as old velvet.
The arch curved like a mouth that had tasted too much and learned to stay silent.
I knew it.
Not with memory.
With blood.
I pressed my palm to it
and something in me answered back —
a pulse against stone,
a recognition.
It opened the way skin parts under pressure.
Slow.
Unwilling.
Certain.
I stepped inside.
The forest was red.
Not painted.
Not lit.
Red like the inside of a closed eyelid.
Red like something living pressed too long in the dark.
The air felt used.
The trees leaned toward me,
their bark darkened with old soaking.
Their roots swollen with what they had taken in over years
no one counted.
I could feel it under my feet,
soft earth that had once been harder,
now loosened by quiet giving.
(whisper)
I knew I would not leave whole.
There was a figure there.
It did not move.
It did not need to.
It stood the way inevitability stands.
Wrapped in shadow that clung like dried stains.
I did not ask it anything.
My body had already begun.
A warmth beneath my ribs.
A slow pulling from the wrists.
From the throat.
From the place behind my knees where I am weakest.
I did not bleed loudly.
Nothing spilled bright.
It was slower than that.
The forest drank through the ground.
Through air.
Through the small invisible openings in me
I had never noticed before.
(lower)
It was not pain.
It was intimacy.
The kind where something comes very close
and takes
without tearing.
The red deepened around my feet.
I felt thinner.
Not dying.
Becoming part of something that did not need my permission.
The figure lifted its head.
I swear it knew my name
before I had one.
Behind me, the green door sealed itself
without regret.
Ahead of me, the trees shifted
closer
closer
until their shadows pressed against my skin
like hands.
(breath shaking but steady)
I did not fight.
I let it take what it wanted.
A little from the wrists.
A little from the tongue.
A little from the soft place where I keep my fear.
The forest does not waste blood.
It keeps it warm.
It keeps it learning.