what could you know of her;
the girl whose palms had collected
the dark spaces
with frolicking knees
and grace unscathed.
who kept the static
buried under her tongue
with her mouth bleeding--
arms that only knew of warmth.
sawdust for sweat,
spine,
a perfect concave.
somewhere in the distance
stars had collapsed,
but she was no longer a lost tourist
in a night sky where even the cosmos
were not made to last.
the desert had settled quietly in her eyes.
maybe that's okay.
there's a war within the walls
that she wins everyday
when she gets her limbs out of the bed
and plasters on her happy,
even when the fallacies float in her lungs like rising mud.
they wonder,
when was the last time she's ever felt
the kind of love
that wasnt a makeshift raft
caught in the middle of a hurricane.
she shifts her shoulders.
when you salvage yourself
even with the last of the pieces you've got,
you refuse to deprive yourself of the ability
to heal.
we're all healing from something.
we're all trying to make it
to the next sunrise.
paddle.
paddle that raft to the sunrise.