And if the soul were to bleed away now, tell me, what would be the words to die on your lips?
Who's hand would you be holding?
Who's heart would be breaking?
Tell me, who would shriek at the stars
Begging for you not to go
And who would rage and riot with God,
Demand he send you home?

often I think i can force the words from my throat
push past the floodgates and fix this drought
but they stick behind my teeth
breathed out - rearranged, changed - back in.
the hollow of my throat holds a thousand tragedies,
a thousand miracles, it births thoughts like colliding stars
and yet they will crawl around my mouth, humming,
a lungful of bees that sting and sting and sting
my thesaurus brain cannot find the right mixture
of vowels and consonants and breaks in sentences
to give justice to what blossoms within me
they say silence speaks volumes
and I have been shouting mutedly all my life.

I will swim languid in the River Styx, absorbed in its acid currents, and when these demons and soldiers place blade to my Achilles they will find no weakness there. I have been unmade and it has made me invincible.

I will, with thunderous voice
Shout love love love
Even if only
Just to hear the echo

And here, Icarus,
with his hubris and his burning wings,
who descends to the sea in fiery splendor.
But think of Daedalus, who watches his son,
exuberant in freedom,
fall wingless to earth,
all charred skin
and wasted dreams