Clenching my lies within my fists
I stand prominent,
forcing the pressure of weightlessness
onto them until they crack;
opening up like wounds,
drenching the tips of my fingers
in venom and lava.

Their acid burn
seeps into the cuts in my skin
from times I have fought this before;
an unyielding inevitability
soaks the marrow of my bones
as I stand – defender and defenceless,
my fists still closed, un-bloomed.

Primed to punch, my stance is unyielding,
as if my body and throat are at war
between the truth and the other;
head lolling in despair
at who I have become
and what I am holding.

The way out is the way in
and I’m looping,
rolling down a hill in a memorial summer,
catching myself at the bottom
and finding it to be the ash-sky;
continually Catherine-wheeling
through remnants of other iterations
of this inevitability.
We always end up here.
We always end up
here.