i.

this is how we discovered breath:

when broken glass that built wine bottles, cut into our throats and bled rivers we swept underneath bitten down fingernails.
when pleading screams wore down to fragile gasps.
when dawn swept over our shivering, crescent bodies like blankets.
when our knees were pushed to offending places by men, we didn’t even know the names of.

this is how we came, a mixture of spilling bodies.
and these hands we shaped, holding our own mouths shut,
and these eyes, these eyes we didn’t keep open anymore.



ii.

this is how we fought:

with our limping legs and our reaching arms.
this is how we loved:

with nails in our lungs, and red paint,
glued to the tips of our tongues.


because our caved selves both ached for serenity and a warm place to rest our heads,
even if that place meant cold waters,
even if that place meant huddled away in a grave,

at least we would know where to find the other.

iii.

this is how we lasted:

with our spines dug out,
with our lips stitched shut,
with our youth,
laid out on the table,
ready for a stranger's mouth to feast on it.

iiii.

we were crippled, we didn’t know these bags of bones we carried on our backs,
could fly.
that’s why, when our feet met the end of the trails, bloodless and vacant,
we buried them underneath the sad, maple trees, where their roots had never experienced touch,

and we sacrificed ourselves.

That is how we became.