"What happened along the way?"
as she looked back to see
her lines crooked, her ink melted
and her pages torn apart
from the book that held her
together

It is sharpening crimson steel in a knife as of that, with it fingers softly bleed like care and rise as a shuttered peach in
a sturdy piece of scarlet, paid in heed.

Your foreboding onthou my skin is no more truly nor less rigid unplugging of violin strings out of a guttural chords into a straight morbid fire, and a pain structure
hardens, straightens,
embeds them forever into every light’s riddance, this trial mended.
Welcomed fireflies in a
solstice. bonfire. forest. [stygian].

Love, my dearest Love, if your ever evanescent body or voice even exists:
if I ever dare to greet in my tears music it only may be to bleed with you in one common fluid, to have my ribs torn gently by
each your promise barely for my hand’s taking,
endure time to have my truer form by you,
a sensation, clad in lilac velvet that goes
under the name of “Paper Airplane” by
my thoughts.

To keep.
Us.
Intact.
More than as rain we always are.

A child picked up a solitary chalk and sketching protruded some things by that hand & sight, some sun with injustice drawn, that elders’ words and acts
have not put up.

Some of the chalk simply lays everyday crushed.

Orange flowers
Catching all the hills on fire
Just to see them burn, I take a breath.
Smoke and dust bind my righteous life underneath my eyelids.
Blindness.

I write my words in cursive so they know how to.
The lines that bind us together can seem so thin,
like a dash of ink, it can be wiped away.

An island only knows water for the way it extends beyond the horizon.
The peaceful splashes of rippling waves can’t pacify the feeling of loneliness;
a passing bird squawks as it carries on its journey.
And the sun keeps rising day after day.

Have you ever felt the jolt of holding someone’s hand?
The spark of life that is embracing them in a hug?
We were made to connect,
yet so many of us sit aside
unplugged.

The singer on the stage begs us to sing along;
and for a moment, every stranger is bound by word and sound.
That post-concert depression hits hardest during that long drive home -
riding solo.

I write my words in cursive so that they know how to.
Because if they do, maybe you will too.

The deepest depths of our lungs
have been deprived of oxygen
for so long
that we cannot remember what is like
to breathe,
deeply and unhindered by
this binder
as the constriction threatens to
collapse the cavity of our chest.

Willingly, we trade our breath
for the exquisite, piercing pain
that we quickly come to associate with
peace of mind
and freedom
because it means the reflection of our silhouette
finally matches the physique our
dysphoria has been telling us
we should have had
our whole lives.

In time, this addiction festers and
we bind longer and more often as
our bodies grow weaker and
our minds more chaotic until,
despite the destruction,
we cannot bear to take them off
and face the truth
written in our curves.

The pain is at one with us now.
We endure, if only to be able to
run our hands longingly down
our flattened chests
as we wait, hoping that,
one day,
we will finally be able to learn
what it is like to
breathe again.