What if it’s all beautiful—
a choice?
What if we name it,
and what if we don’t?
Can I still dream of
slow mornings and still legs,
with skies tinted with colors
no one has yet named?

To sink and find a new world
beneath the one I know,
beneath groundwater
pulling at our feet—
Not to run away,
but to find the shape I used to wear,
before I knew how to fold into myself,
before the edges started to tear—
of something I’ve forgotten how to care for.
Each step softer, slower,
becoming—
but I stumble each time,
and I don’t know how to walk correctly
half the time, so I choose to stand.

Surrender in the quiet,
let the ripples take what they will.
Gone before waking,
before the silence takes form
through my initials,
a hollow shape I carved into mist—
the scent of rain
that hangs
a name the air refused to hold.
The ground remains dry,
forgotten,
one letter at a time
and I become nothing again.

But what if, through my insignificance,
my voice could break water,
not like a stone, but a breath,
dissolving before splitting,
a sound so soft
no one turns to listen,
but still,
brief and real while it lasts,
shifting the current all the same,
would it reach the stars above me?
And if not,
I will stretch my arms out—
even if it feels small,
even if I feel small,
I will stretch my arms out anyway.

Songbirds don’t look at stars—
they remember flying through them,
light still clinging to their wings
in quiet threads,
as if every note they’ve ever sung
was once a star’s breath,
returning now
as feather,
as memory,
as hush.

Below, the earth forgets—for a moment,
as they belong only
to the sky—
their shadows stilled on rooftop shingles,
dew collecting on the curve of an open beak.

The stars break open,
a quiet rift in the silk of night,
and the birds tear through it,
their wings drenched in the pulse of the void that calls them.
They are not flying—they are dissolving,
splintering the sky with their hollow bones,
a single feather falling—still warm—
onto frostbitten grass, where breath curls like thread,
the air holding its breath,
where a child once pointed upward,
cheeks red with cold,
mouth open,
trying to name the silence.

They unravel the seam of existence,
folding the stars into their wings.
Each beat of their flight whispers of something
older than the pull of gravity,
older than the first sigh of the earth,
and their bodies hum with the pulse of forgotten time—
raw as the tongue of first flame,
electric as life before it knew how to die,
diving through the dark,
shuddering like the first breath of dawn.

Their wings slice the air,
each beat a breath drawn from the edge of infinity,
light unraveling in the wake of their flight,
a trail of fire stitching itself into the sky—
as if the stars are only ghosts
sleeping in the hollows of their wings.

And down below,
the frost still clings to the grass,
the rooftop shingles glint with dew,
and the child—grown now,
worn and quiet—
steps outside before the sun,
looks up,
and in the hush between two heartbeats,
remembers.

Not the birds,
not the sky,
but the moment before the wound hums open,
when pain still tastes like possibility,
and the body leans into the ache,
as if it could outrun the stars—
their pull straining
against the throat of its own name.
A raw hush stretching,
nerves still speaking between pulse and ruin,
caught between breath and breaking,
where silence sings its softest name,
and the flame almost—almost—takes.

Ode to soul,
as naive and silent,
still and slow,
as the golden hour left quiet.
A bright fluorescent mixed with discovery
clean as despair
from what the ground has done to me.

The color of adolescence unhinged by the earth—
simply sit and pull me from the dirt.
My existence would leave,
a slumber I live;
every little bit of me bleeds to be heard.

I wanted to be painted by the color of adolescence,
but I think more that I wanted to be seen
to prove that i too, was here—
that I did not go quietly.
that I spilled through wandering hues,
ash and fumes,
though I was the golden hour,
smudged in a flicker, wild and wanting
Still, I spill—
tongue my own name, let it be hunger,
let it bite back.
To be called by something other than quiet.