so i'm the dragon, big deal.

a father stands over his crying son & hisses I’ll give you something to cry about as if he didn’t already bring a child into a world that requires neither of them.

pay me what you owe me for the way my heart breaking has made yours feel less like an anchor & in exchange, i will tell you that true wealth is the ability to embrace forgetting.

Only thing that separates purgatory and hell is whether or not you can see the face of someone you’ve loved in the fire, baby, and I’m good with what I ain’t got.

but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of lullabies

I suppose that’s a common conceit, that you’ve already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.

You were no stranger to wanting your heart to be anything but a muscle you called your own.

I loved you and hated you. You may find me struggling to balance both on the mantelpiece. I pray for earthquakes. I pray for the fireplace.

I do not know sometimes how to be the kindness I know my cursive spirit to be written in.

I say every other day I convinced myself not to leave this earth

Thank you for this gift of survival.

I do not miss you, but sometimes that isn’t true.

Forgive me,