There is a difference between holding your breath And not breathing at all One takes a lot more effort One is the product of carrying too much The other of carrying nothing at all
When I walk into a crowded room I will hold my breath until my lungs find a reason to relax My face will flush and I will eye the exits And I will imagine any possible scenario that would allow me to leave Which is to say, I’d rather be in danger than be here
I’d rather be in a secluded single bed hospital room Than brushing shoulders with conversations that don’t concern me Smiling uncomfortably to an offensive joke because You don’t know me enough to know the fire in my bones That I could ignite and burn you to the ground.
You also don’t know how I wish I could extinguish that How I burn down everything I touch How I wish my embers would die down Lacking oxygen might not be the worst thing
No, being alone in a crowded room wouldn’t either Saying unironically that I stand alone in a crowded room As if it has never been said before- might just be Or maybe my sparks are burning this poem up too Ruining its changes
You gotta understand, The thing about fire is It is a beautiful beast A chaotic dancer who knows both sides of Everything beautiful and everything not
In my eyes fire eats its beauty It eats the life from inside out as it spits remnants of relics Too tough to melt So when we are in the flames Like our salem sisters we think How can something so grand So intriguing So important Be burnt down by a people so ignorant Only to reveal what is truly important How could you not see that as a compliment
How can you not see that we are all the flames And that we are all also being eaten by them As we consume everything around us in turn And that maybe we just need to catch our breath.