You missed—
        so you stopped trying.
                  
I missed—
                     I still do.

How horribly sad
that all you left are your ghosts -
and they haunt me still.

I want to believe that I am not nothing. That I am a conflagration struggling against the crushing darkness. That I am a flare of light, ephemeral and inconsequential but brilliant and visible, nonetheless. I want to believe that I am not the monster I have always feared. That I have weaving fingers and unwavering hands that hold and cradle and carry. That my shoulders have known tears and my tears have known shoulders. I want to believe that I am not a desecrated ruin that can only weather the storm by staying dead and broken. That my glass innards are fractured and unwhole but form colored spider webs from shades of my blood. That my parched skin is merely paper begging for the taste of ink. That there is a story waiting to be written. That there is someone willing to write it. I want to believe that I am a survivor. That I can break and topple and crumble into shambles and rise five minutes later and keep walking without looking back. That I am not hollow inside. That I am not a completely horrible creature. That I float on hurricanes.

I want to believe that I am capable of these things.

I want someone to believe that I am capable of these things.

I want someone to know that I want to believe in these things.

I want to tell someone a story. A story about fire and monsters and hands and hugs and buildings and glass and writers and towers and hurricanes. A story about believing.

But there is one thing I want more than anything—

I want to be a story.

I am crippled
and cursed
with the inability
to feel anything
less
than
this.

There's a certain chord
that thrums in the same wavelength
of sonorous solitude.
It is more of a quiver than a vibration
like a bird's wing trapped
in the half-inch between the tips
of a boy's thumb and index finger.

I hear the sound of
repressed struggles and imprisoned words
like a bottle of soda shaken, shaken

hiss.

It sounds something
like the clink of glass shards
swept into a forgotten corner
or the whistle of labored breaths
ebbing against the sandpaper lining
inside the throat
or the atomic scream
of dust corpuscles settling
on top of cardboard boxes filled with
nostalgia for the unattainable.

I know this sound, this song.
I hear it in the flutter of your eyelashes
the murmurs of your fingers
across my skin
the unspoken lying between your teeth
forcing their way to the corners of your mouth
your smile.

This is the sound of a divine choir
when heaven
collapses.