Your words are powerful—
take away the sterling silver glint of a blade
buried beneath your rib cage and you will
see
how they sour stones and reverberate down Cyrpus Wells
full of venerable solace.

I cast my line into the sea,
tangled in the web of what’s in between,
searching for a meaning that’s not there.
But… your words wallow with me,
sultry in day’s spine, rambling long a serenaded coast,
fallow beach umbrellas railing against coarse high tide
as I weathered the hard won sanctity.

You once fetched a high price, trying to lose the tumbled mass,
scattering around your ankles.
Your lips drank unearthly bitterness at the salt in their veins,
and you tossed the words, traded them for a rope to spin me
from underneath lame hooves.

Tattered, whipping polyester strains to break free
snapping at the wind for sailing too quick and I can
see you
landing on your feet, seizing that of which was thrown away,
an old recorder full of rotten seaweed and fragmented shells.

“Words will not break you.”

See as you surge up from the Cyprus Well you peddled away,
watch as you claim the skies with hawk eyes and a beak born of bleak bitterness,
Lashing language into unrecognizable shapes,
and behold the verity sewn strength in your words.

See that

“You are incomplete and the universe and ever-evolving.”

And stand for yourself, endure their words
and remember—
your own words are powerful too.