breathe—
like mint shrub under a drizzle,
Ink clawing it’s way up a quill
Like lemon grass, growing
Like steam rising from a cup of tea
Like parchment.
Like confetti circling a cyclone
Like a whip kissing skin
a branch cracking
Like chalk against cement,
Like nails on sandpaper
Like glitter.
breathe—
But sometimes I lie straight on my back
Under a heavy quilt—
let my limbs slump away, let my fingers sink, weakly in sheets
And I think,
this is how we die—
Insipid eyes blanketed by skin
A book incomplete—closed without a mark.
They may tie our chin and skull with a strip of cloth
to prevent our loose jaw from falling open,
this— is how we die
Like the carcass of Morning Glory
hanging— swaying in the wind
Like coal left behind by a burning log,
Like a dusty painting.
Like a moor.
No wings sprout out our jagged backs
put us in a box and clothe us in dirt
No earthworms spare our clotted blood
Clouds don’t come bowing down
Sky stays high, still— out of reach
Silence—
Like a beetle crawling down a leaf
the ocean behind a portrait
Like moon, yawning
Like a folded paper, filled with scribbles
Like dusk.
Like a still child.
a tongueless nightingale up a bough
Like words in a bottled letter.
Like rubble under smoke
Like a palette, unwashed.
Like a bone.
Silence—
And someone knocks under you
You dig out the coffin
But it’s filled, to the brim, with mud.
And time spirals on—
Pushing us behind, and we fight against it.
A puppet tied to the sky,
trying to fall down an abyss
Like a stone under the ocean
breathe—
Like a newborn leaf.
breathe—
But the time spirals on—
and we, with the dirt, reunite.
but breathe,
it's just a night.
breathe--
the air hasn't banished-- not yet
not yet
not yet--