Sep 2017
I.
Everything breaks in the winter, even you. Your words will form like shapeless prayers, your hands folded into a rock you threw against the stained glass, your body a silhouette of begging. There, in a cathedral of snow, you will wish for spring. You will wish to be soaked in May, to grow flowers from the dirt under your nails. You will pray for another chance at sunlight, another chance to dance in the rain. You never wanted to disappoint six-year-old you, but here you are, eighteen and trembling, eighteen and doubting. Some nights you find yourself curled up like a fist at the foot of your bed trying to find an easier way to exist. In January your footsteps will be slow as the dawn and you will finally learn there is no easy way.
II.
When you were nine, you caught a butterfly in your hands and felt its wings drum against your cupped palms. Years later, as his fingers flit up and down your back, you will be reminded of how sometimes you must let beautiful things go simply because they are beautiful. And this notion will carry you back. Back to your eighth summer, back to the fireflies you caught in a plastic water bottle, the fireflies who needed scissor-popped holes to breathe, the fireflies you set free so they could make light. It was then you realized that some stars can be held but never kept. And now, as you fall asleep at night, somewhere in the world a child reaches for the moon but ends up with a broken-winged firefly. In your dreams you will reach out for her but never touch.
III.
I ask that September be good to you and you be good to everything else.
IV.
October broke you open like a question
and you found an answer composed
entirely of words
that will never come.
Dusk is a language
you have become fluent in
but refuse to speak aloud:
a conversation solely between
you & the silence.
V.
Now you find yourself back inside your home built cathedral, an unanswered prayer frozen into the cracks at the sides of your mouth. You move like a broken-winged bird in the heart of winter: a sparrow incapacitated by its own song, a white noise falling through the air like snow. Here you are again, curled up like a fist angry at everything, a swear forming in the back of your throat but freezing there. Not even in the darkest months can you convince yourself to abandon the hope of light. So you stay, silent as the spring and still as the dawn, and remember seventeen.
Everything breaks in the winter, even you. Your words will form like shapeless prayers, your hands folded into a rock you threw against the stained glass, your body a silhouette of begging. There, in a cathedral of snow, you will wish for spring. You will wish to be soaked in May, to grow flowers from the dirt under your nails. You will pray for another chance at sunlight, another chance to dance in the rain. You never wanted to disappoint six-year-old you, but here you are, eighteen and trembling, eighteen and doubting. Some nights you find yourself curled up like a fist at the foot of your bed trying to find an easier way to exist. In January your footsteps will be slow as the dawn and you will finally learn there is no easy way.
II.
When you were nine, you caught a butterfly in your hands and felt its wings drum against your cupped palms. Years later, as his fingers flit up and down your back, you will be reminded of how sometimes you must let beautiful things go simply because they are beautiful. And this notion will carry you back. Back to your eighth summer, back to the fireflies you caught in a plastic water bottle, the fireflies who needed scissor-popped holes to breathe, the fireflies you set free so they could make light. It was then you realized that some stars can be held but never kept. And now, as you fall asleep at night, somewhere in the world a child reaches for the moon but ends up with a broken-winged firefly. In your dreams you will reach out for her but never touch.
III.
I ask that September be good to you and you be good to everything else.
IV.
October broke you open like a question
and you found an answer composed
entirely of words
that will never come.
Dusk is a language
you have become fluent in
but refuse to speak aloud:
a conversation solely between
you & the silence.
V.
Now you find yourself back inside your home built cathedral, an unanswered prayer frozen into the cracks at the sides of your mouth. You move like a broken-winged bird in the heart of winter: a sparrow incapacitated by its own song, a white noise falling through the air like snow. Here you are again, curled up like a fist angry at everything, a swear forming in the back of your throat but freezing there. Not even in the darkest months can you convince yourself to abandon the hope of light. So you stay, silent as the spring and still as the dawn, and remember seventeen.
