together our family was a flower
              and petals got ripped off
                              and now we're pressed and preserved and dead in a
                                               photo album

some of us are dead, another body in a grave and an x-ed out name on a family tree
some of us are alive, carrying on and telling the stories of who we were with wet eyes and crumpled hearts

we have burns and scars and bruises and still, even in the funeral-home-quiet of our messy souls, we breathe again, another generation of loud and emotional and freckled kids following us

in the wake of loss and ache and everything raw, life proves its beauty once again: we are our darkest moments, the genetic disease we pass to our children
but we are our brightest, too, and we hold each other as we create from the ashes

The piercing cold has frozen my hold.
As my breath mists in the wind, I lose my mind in my sin.
Why did I walk through the pitch black portal?
Why did I sell my innocence for a price that wasn't priceless?
I look into the mirror, my face is what I see.
Yet my eyes hold a darkness, how is this me?
So I turn in horror, step out for some air.
But from me escapes screams of unfiltered anguish 'til my voice is like a bear.
Why did I walk?
Why did I sell?
Let the cold take me.
It's warmer than my hell.

Let me take your heart
to where it should lie,
in a place that consists
of only you and I.

Let me take your heart
to where it should be,
in a world that exists
for only you and me.

**© Sarah Ahmed