I’ve sat with Silence
As she cast silhouettes
Moving in the likes
of Ballerinas across
My hair.

I’ve moved with them too.
That’s how I’ve come
To know their names
Or natures
As such:

1) The one who sold her soul to the Devil
For pennies and a dollar
So her mother could
Come off the
Corner

2) The one who put Fireflies and Rainbows
In mason jars and played make
Believe with running fingers
And a wounded
Moon

3) The one whose only trace of a father is
The bloodstain on the wall like a
Family photo with X’s over
The faces because he
Destroyed more
Than his own
Soul

4) The one who strung sorrow to the ceiling
To play its marionette with dancing
Shadows weeping and frightfully
Abandoned, hiding under
A candle in shameful
Bliss

5) The one who wandered though fields
Of whispering epitaphs that
Made nursery rhymes
From the likes of
Madness

6) The one who locked her heart in
A vault within ashen walls and
Wrote letters to stars that
Wrote it’s not her fault
She’s infinitesimally
Small

I told myself I would never return
To sleep
To dream
To surrender my mind to its own
Devices
Vices.

But here am I, Lord
Swinging with the wind
Under a purple tinged twilight
Making friends with twisted tongues,
and braided hearts slinking through the alley.

I’ve bore my heart like a cross,
Carried it past moratorium
Marching east for west
Until my frantic feet
Cease to move
Me.