The gray before the break
Is bleaker than the deepest black.
In that moment, neither sun nor stars are seen,
With light enough to fumble,
The world, meticulously painted,
Is one fell stroke of desperation;
The contrast of pinpricks stars in deepest night
More hopeful than this false ambition
Right before the dawn.

It hurt
When our souls were ripped apart;
We were made as one.

The agony has echoed through my life
Of the moment when the sun hit my eyes
And you were torn from me
For what has felt like a lifetime,

Of when they announced our arrivals
To two sets of parents
And we were taken home in different cities,

And we were ripped from each other
From loving darkness to blinding, aching light,
Left to wander
Until we might find
Each other again.

You leave me
Devastated
Speechless
Shell- shocked,
Like the ground on the field of battle
Absorbing what remains.

You leave me
In a state
Not unlike
The flight
Of a ladybug-
So swift, leaving you
Wondering
If she had been there at all.

You leave me
Mouth agape
Marveling
At the treasure that had been right at my fingertips,
At the sweetness that my tongue could have tasted,
That I could have filled my nose with all of your molecules,
That I could have filled my arms with every part of you,
That your laugh could have warmed my soul for just a little bit longer.

Hardened men, softened
By a lash, by a glance

Dirtied, uncovered
Soft of heart, sharp of eye

Themselves betrayed
By the stab of a gaze

Calcified, petrified
Of letting the softness away.

The clock stopped

And was defibrillated by the breath
Of the materialized bundle of
Blue skin and slippery warmth and matted hair.

An eternity of pain that lasted hours
Turned to infinity of minutes of suctioning and flashing lights,
Then to days that felt like forever of hospital stays.

The timeless car ride home turned into
Equally long three hour lifetimes,
Each expiring with every hungry cry.

The rest of my life
Is punctuated by moments,
By such realizations as, that

This minuscule creature
Kicking staccato butterfly flutters
Now on the outside of my stomach
Traveled in a horseshoe pattern from the inside to get there;

That I've never felt like such a miracle
As when listening to tiny bellows
Pump air in and out, mechanically rhythmic,
Like a drummer at the band practice of life.

convey, contain, explain the pain,
the unbearable straining 'gainst tons over weight,
like inevitable cracking 'fore porcelain breaks--
to slash 'cross the page like so many small veins,
to set ink a'flowing like filth in the rain,
to put words to paper (less likely to fade
than those meaningless noises that most people make)?

How lonesome, the cold sound, the poetry scratching
the sad, angry nib makes when blanks come a'bounding,
to conquer attempts made at filling the space
(the more full the margins the less full my brain),
the keening, the whining, erasing the phrase
created in lieu of composing my face,
Denied, stamped and branded, made nothing the matter,
               no meaning, validity-- like me, ever after.