Endurance

“I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.”

“Like any unloved thing, I don’t know if I’m real when I’m not being touched.”

I have a crow inside me and no one can know. I can feel it all the time. It is like the entire night sky and all the stars and every beautiful sound you can imagine. It is like being too excited to sleep. It is like being twelve years old and stripping off my clothes outside in the rain. Savage. Girl. Suddenly awake to the deviance available in every ordinary moment. The possibilities of my current situation had not occurred to me before now. The freedom. There is a crow in my chest.

“You were born with a ribcage / around your heart and no key. / Your heart spills and spills / through the notches, a thick / sticky red like melting lipstick. / Nothing washes out the stains.”

“We don’t fear death, and neither should you. You know what Socrates said about death, in Greek, of course? “Death is just one more night.””

“Are you accidental—Temporary? Does the moon sink in your skin; are the daffodils talking again?”

“I am so busy. I am practicing my new hobby of watching me become someone else. There is so much violence in reconstruction. Every minute is grisly, but I have to participate. I am building what I cannot break.”