My Ink-Stained Soul

I remember every breath, heartbeat, bit of beauty, before it all broke

this secret is ours to keep. - the key to happiness -

you expected me to bloom all year-round-- a perennial without need of changing conditions without want to adjust to the seasons never expecting me to wilt due to lack of attention, affection, support.

once, there were dark spaces, unexplored, within me, yet torch in hand, you ventured forth, finding solace in the solitude, the silence, the adventure of the great unknown.

I wrote you a thousand times, in a thousand little stories, in poems scrawled on crumpled napkins, sent through the cold web of cyberspace. I made you a princess, an immortal, a lover, a friend. But most of all, and don’t forget, my darling dear, I made you human. I ripped away your armor to show the scars across your skin. I burned your gowns to ash to leave you vulnerable, unguarded. I let the flames flicker, fly, lick at your flesh. That’s how a phoenix rises. From her own ashes. She fights her own wars without fear of being burned. She fights without care new scars will mar her skin and scorch. She fights, and she wins. You will always be a princess of crooked crown and a language of laughter, but when the flames find you…let them. Burn, then rise higher. Princess to Phoenix

khalil; a close, intimate friend, one who sees scars and knows their stories. who would think a few ink-stains could ever contain all you would ever mean to me

ripe figs flattened beneath blood-crusted boots, olives stolen straight from the vine, pits spat to an earth once divine, now stained with the fruits of our labor, the blood of sisters and ancestors; a land occupied and vilified, no longer free from the inside.

did you ever notice me wilting away, or were you too focused on the accomplishment, when I decided to stay?

I’ve been standing at this precipice stuck between one road & the next for years, limbs locked, lungs left empty afraid to leave the only road I’ve known (lost to fear)