Sometimes

Sometimes
It hurts.


Solar plexus hit
You break
You’re breaking
You’re broken
Harden the point
Make it count
Make it
The killing blow

You are strong
Enough
Strong enough
For this.


You think.

Everything is so far away
And I can’t breathe
Like I used to
Fear
Like some large beast
Makes it’s home
On my chest
Crushing the air
From my lungs
I am restrained
By its weight alone
Trapped
Grasping
At air
And the ignorance
Of passersby

I can’t breathe
My vision
Tunnels inward
Black at the edges
The weight
Is too much
My ribs shatter
And my heart
Is cut to ribbons
but still pounds
Faithfully
In my chest
Even when
All I want
Is for it
To stop.

We speak as one stone to another
In silent millennia
The slow language of erosion
And The decay of time around us

We are static objects
The universe spinning around us
While we stare at star trails
And wish we could be meteorites

Maybe we were falling stars once
Flaring and fading too quickly
Maybe we were once young and on fire
Maybe being still really is our reward.

Like a demon raised
From a hell I don’t believe in
A spike of heat to the heart
Burning up, out,
Pressing against your ribcage
Like something trapped
Dangerous
Choking on a sharp tongue
That jumps up
Shattering against
The teeth and lips
That hold it in
And the words fall
Unused and unwanted
From a fading smile
Piling up
The debris
Of a thousand things
Left unsaid.

I want to disappear
Into the rumble and hum of this world
I want to see
Faces I’ve never seen before
And places I never knew I’d love
I want new colours
A new piece of the sky to dream about
I want to know
The wings I feel
Thrusting out
From my shoulders
Aren’t just
Wax, paper, and string
Fragile and temporary
That they will let me
Fly away from here.

You catch dancing particles of dust
In your hand, and call them magic
Because they disappear when you open it again
And maybe there is a little magic there
Hidden in the fibers of my carpet
But dust settles and is swept away
It cannot dance forever
The sun won’t stream soft and warm
Through my bedroom window every morning
But I’m okay with slate grey skies
With the ticking of the rain on my window
This too is important, somehow.

I am musing on a dream
Where we’ve found ourselves drowning
And we are dragged from the water
Coughing and retching
Into the open skies
And we realize this is what life is
This is how we live
silently drowning
While we are saved repeatedly
By the rough hands of strangers
Or loved ones
Though sometimes
They are the same thing
We think the wrong thoughts
At the wrong times
It’s dangerous
Like swimming under ice
Especially when
There’s no one
To break through
To pull you to the surface
But we do it anyway
And maybe
That was the plan all along.