I could've just laid down if
I wanted to

ignoring the bells that echoes
inside my head

Let the earth swallow me
among withered leaves that decay
beside me

Let the world dry out
as if all lamented things
belong to me

I could act as if
my heart is an icy winter water,
never to beat, never to warm at all

Granite skies would drift above me,
haunting me in my night and
summer days

But in the thunder that frightens me
A swift lightning would pass me by,
a crack of gold in my darkest night

The flood crashing through doors,
through all the breathe that I've lost
I would learn to hold every air that I touch

All the celestial mass throbbing in my chest
The distant rumble of supernovas
that tears me apart,
and black sunshine that shines on my face

Even if midnight splatters beneath my eyes,
with all the stars that glimmer
that badly wants to fall

Even if half of my shadow is blown to nether
I would suffer everyday, and in my pain
I knew I could feel

I would die everyday, with all lamented things
and in all my deaths

I have learned to live

I grew up along the Brazos River
Not far from an old cotton plantation.

By the time I was a child, it was in complete decay
And it left the same in the lives of those
Who had been slaves for generations afterwards.

I remember the first time those descendants
Rode our bus to their raggedy old school,
My generous, childish heart ached for them.
Much later, they'd go to the nice modern one.

I made many new friends on those rides.
I let Cookie brush my hair, as the other girls stared.
She was "high-yellow" or bright, as they would say.
My heart thrills to see them now grown, come into
The beauty of life as it was meant to be lived by all.

Yet, now evil forces seek to undo that.

A crack runs through the sky,
and nothing fits together.

Air too heavy to breathe,
days collapsing into themselves,
nights stretched thing and endless.

We became silence-
chairs empty, voices swallowed,
a rhythm that lost its beat.

The ground kept moving
but we didn't.
We stayed in that moment,
shattered glass scattered across the floor,
cutting us each time we tried to walk forward.

Even now,
the air hums with absence,
a weight we cannot lift,
a shadow that will not fade.

September never left.
It only lingers,
an ache that teaches us
how to keep breathing
inside of broken things.

I feel like I'm a waste of perfectly good air
Everyone hates me
And I think I hear death calling my name