Warm water softly rinsed away all fragility

  a future, open, a fresh scent
    
       You were there when I awoke
             and I always remember

               the shades of light this world allows
                   only when we're together

Because we both know the sound of gunfire
Except I, didn’t grow up in a war zone
It was a different kind from yours
Our bullets were words
Sounds of breaking glass
And the shards of which made it into my cheerios the next day
Chewed them anyway to spite
The sound that
Breaking makes

You,
you know the sound of falling bodies too readily
  you can mimic them in your footsteps
The smell of rotting corpses
What kind of scars shrapnel really leaves

What the color of blood really looks like
I see that shade of red every time you speak
  The way you keep it hidden in those paintings
In the drawer that I sneak into when you sleep
Know too well what evil looks like

I can find a place for all the words buried in my chest
inside your bullet wounds easily

If I were not a coward

Staring into the dark irises of men in uniforms dirtier than their conscience,
Find it easier to look into a barrel of a gun
Only one of them holds salvation
  
No, you are not afraid of guns
Nor the sound that breaking makes


But I still remove the safety pin
Just in case

You have to believe
    otherwise, there's
            nothing to be done

What if the closest I get
to that moment is now?

If it is true that for every closed door
there is one that is open, then I have
closed every door to look for cracks
in the windows, slivers of light near
the rugs, waiting by the slot for the
mail to arrive, never blind-peeking
because I place weight on the hope
that this house will break apart and
all dust will fly from the rafters above
me, who might finally breathe the
foreign air and taste the new day