through the grating hum
of forever closing locker lids
they sing textbook hallelujahs

we are the quiet ones
stalking hallways
like burnt words under
shuddered breath
our skin is calloused
to rip your shallow daggers
and teach you painless peace

so when you sleep
imagine we are drifting
about your eyelids
a breath away
from bruised

the body falls soft
curves collapsing on the edge of
bedspread tangled in cliched prison
escape ropes
tied loose like old tendon,
we are all but used.

I feel the force of Fibonacci
spiraling between ribs
and pelvis, golden ratios
divining skin,
1 to 1.616

there is a hole in my tongue
where the roots go
and I am left here
with sycamore leaves between
my pebble teeth,
praying for rain.

let me forget you.

take me to the drowned forest
where water gurgles from
descicated root-lungs,
preserving limpness in form.
where I can feel at home
dangling, the shadowed bats
swerve in overcast light.

here, I am caught
pretending that the ground
rushes towards me,
and peace is in my lungs.

fleeting, as the earth to
rising sparrows,
life stretches beyond
swinging feet. in a breath,
it shrinks
to mere marbles in
a childhood pocket,
drips from faucets on
upturned faces, squinting
through joy and soap.

life rolls over sidewalks,
around first steps, grating
on scratching pavement.
we've had our scars
more often than skinned knees

like  piano wire, life
ties tune and blood through throat
it muzzles and goads
hyena, perched vultures cackling
life crams with cracking and
static in hope, panic.

it slips,
on the outbreath
as the earth to rising sparrows.
so we all go-quiet.

only marbles, only scars.

I am changing
every "I am"
to "we are".

In the shallow hope
that semantics can
save me.

(us)