in the beginning, we
were nothing. we were bloodstains.
we were the dust on the floors
of our grandmother's houses in the days
after the funeral. at night,
you played the piano: we were the silence
after the last chord, and when the applause came
we collapsed like a house in a hurricane.
and you told us to cry. you told us
to shriek ourselves into oblivion, to scream the night away
and rise with the morning sun. you carved us
out of glass, in the half-light before dawn, and you told us,
this is stasis. this is stillness. this is silence.
you knew that nothing
could become something, and
that silence could become screaming could become singing.
you knew that we would fly away one day,
and that when the applause came, we would stand
and take a bow, even if our bones cracked with the strain of it.