“I'll find them"
I say as I come across another corpse
The blood leaking out of the open wounds inflicted upon them.
Turning their intellect into a poison
that eats them inside out.  
They're gone now (blanched from existence),
I look around
And see the bones on which
My “exceptionalism” stands.
Unnoticed by most
but I sense their ghosts in the spaces that should be filled.  
The same system that killed my kin,
demands I cannibalize them
to sell me as a relic - a reminder of what was
But I never forget - or forgive - a murderer.

Tunneling thoughts like rain
Craning through light clouds
Unsuspecting victims.

The fear
The tears
The temper tantrums;
                                           A kind of rebuttal

That won't let our feet find land
We adjourned to rehearse,
but our efforts were null and void

Only to appease with flames
that licked our shriveled bodies

D r
       i    p
                 p  i  n
                             g  
                                              Kerosene

Tainted like ink                  Spilled on
Reams of paper
ruined like Christmas
A house warmed by          Open flames

fallen candles                     Adorning
A naked kitchen                 My limp body,

Splayed beneath the oven      
                                               As
darkness indulges,             It
consumes
The smoke,                          Fills                
                                               Each crevice
                                               In your mind

Can you ever fight it
Burn your way back
To blissful ignorance.

What is real to me
Is not real to you

The weight on my back
You can’t see from your angle

I must be so bored
To complain so **** often

As my spine starts to give out
Pain trickles down each vertebrae

I must want attention
When you ask why my feet ache

I tell you how a man filled my backpack with stones

Oh!
You know who i’m talking about!
What a ******* right?

Oh.
He would never do such a thing

Well,
Because,

He’s never done that to you.

That must mean my story’s not true.

I must be so sick
And ****** in the head

To be crying at night from the soreness years later

You’d think i’d adjust to the workout
Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.

Who would want to be around someone with such a bad limp?

It’s just easier to stay in bed.

Then the pain is just mine.

And nobody gets to have an opinion on if it’s real or not.

When you come
Into my space
It makes me want to hide
And take my bones
And memories
And things I never
Speak of
And climb inside
A closet that leads to Narnia
Or somewhere else
Than here
Cause when you come
into my space
So does every single
Fear.

    So stay away.

                         -L.Frost

Survivors
by Michael R. Burch

(for the victims and survivors of 9/11 and their families)

In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:

a shiver of “empathy.”

We too are “survivors,”
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death

like a turtle retracting its neck.

Published by The HyperTexts, Gostinaya (Russia), Ulita (Russia), Promosaik(Germany), The Night Genre Project and Muddy Chevy; also turned into a YouTube video by Lillian Y. Wong. Keywords: survivors, victims, families, 911, 9/11, terrorist, attack, terrorism, empathy, sympathy, truth, horror, death, survive, survival

My moods swing.
Sharp left,
sharp right,
spinning,
spiraling.

This time has me losing my footing,
sinking,
floating off,
untethered.

Breathe.

Remember,
you can swim.

This is hard.

Some days,
I
try
to survive.

Other days,
I
am
drowning.

Breathe.

It will be okay,
again.

You will be okay,
again.

We will be okay,
again.

Remember,
you are a survivor.

We are survivors.