We ran
From something
Unseen. We were
Two, a man and a woman  

River flowed red
He is steel. And her tears
Bullets. We are
Bayonets and gun barrels  

The earth flourished
With steel, straight statues
Of trees and undergrowth
A perennial memorial  

Buried, we were
Under the earth
Meant to last forever
Meant to simply be  

Red silence
Enveloped the world
My brothers...
Glided between the trees  

Creatures joined
Those of all kinds, prowl
Across the land
Around their brothers  

The earth split
We are the valleys. Gashes
Along the veins of the earth
Runs red like streams and fountains  

Wounds dried and flaking
Freely beasts roamed
Lands demarcated
Trampled, trodden  

We are echoes
Within the canyons. We stalk
Like spirits, like steel
Behind fervor, behind craze  

They lost
Time was forgotten
Time was reclaimed
Remade  

We do not know time
We do not sow
We do not reap
We do not see
We do not hear  

The world is never silent
But the underground is  

How would you feel
If you knew that
The world was hollow
Held up by rifles...

In my bones, I am a poet
And every word I trail shows it
Like a fingerprint to trace
Conjures an image of my face.

Any essays, I might write
With golden flourish, thrilling heights
With wide crescendos, rumbling frisson
Soft like silk and smooth like ribbon.

So when my teacher does request
A lab report or written test
I may bring tears to their eyes—
Still, I did not get it right.

I am being drawn and quartered
By each expectation pulling away,
Tugging at my fragile sense
Of identity (if there ever was one)
Until suddenly, oh no! So suddenly
I am in pieces, and each person has only
A part of myself, that is all I can give—
I gave myself the death sentence, they’re
Only the horses that tear away my
Skin.

As they bolt away, I wonder
How far they will go until they
Realize
That I am no longer Whole.

I sit here sinking
Into the dirt,
Without feeling because I am on
The precipice of numbness,
A mere step away from screaming.

A noisy impatient fly
Humming by my ear like the fluorescent light overhead
Near imperceptible, but in the silence, grating
As it sung out, buzz, buzz, buzz, out of itself,
Always droning, never a pause in the incessant
Static.

And you, O my soul, where you sit,
Trapped in a cocoon of web, never quite alone
But immovably stagnant, perhaps once learning, chasing, dancing, Seeking that elusive something,
Till exhausted by the endless journey, only ever wishing
For a home
That you never found, but barely existing you continue, O my soul.

Everybody seems
Terrified of what will happen
When one person or another
Wins this election
And it matters so much
But not so much that you
Need to scream at others telling
Them what to believe, who to
Vote for.

I want to say, “IT DOESN’T MATTER!”
Because we 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 that they will do nothing.
The president is only a single part
Of a single branch
And no one listens to them anyway.
These people may be dangerous
But they are effectively ineffective
And the greatest danger of all
Is how we choose to treat each other,
And no president can change that—
No president can take away this basic
Human decency.

So let us all
Vote personhood
For president.

Let us all look the
Fearmongers in their eyes
And say: 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥.

I am but a specter—
An apparition, immaterial and gauzy,
Gossamer and ghostly,
Hardly even there.

When I leave,
They do not notice.

When I stay,
They do not notice.

I am as the pleasant music,
Playing in the background.
Enjoyed when present, seldom missed
When all that fills the silence is
Their voices, chattering like birds
Above the sea, without me.

I am as the cheerful actress,
Seen but never known.
I say my lines without a flaw
Unbelievably real, so the audience
Believes that they know my soul,
The marrow of my bones and the essence
Of what my heart pumps through my veins,
But the things they know are as curated
As these words upon the page.

When your heart races,
Rushing out of a dream,
And words leave spaces
And lines in between,
Where your heart heals
To be shattered again,
Like oceans surreal
Once the reverie ends,
Frantically you strain
To let yourself sink,
With a mind soiled, stained,
And brimming with ink.