SALT WATER VEINS

rbcages:

i. You fight because it is the most intimate act you can think of, the way blood flows from one body and spills onto the other, the way your bones collapse on impact, a meteorite fist landing in your concave crater cheek. ii. There are no skeletons in your closet–they’re stuffed into the confession booth beside the altar to which you have chained yourself, and they rattle and they shake like a warning when you feel yourself drifting too far. (You are unsure whether this is because you are pious or because god is something you can see without a working pair of eyes.) iii.  Your memories are flame-licked and stained with blood, you’ve learned to read the wind and it whispers secrets into your ears. You know there is a pair of lips waiting to swallow you whole, heart and all; the shifts in the air tell you that you are gravitating in the wrong direction. iv. There is a compass tattooed to your insides and still you are hopelessly lost. Heaven and Hell are warring inside you, always brutal, always merciless. If you fall, does it mean that you, too, were once an angel?

two word starters

they made you into a weapon and told you to find peace

Please, let him be soft.  I know you made him       with gunmetal bones      and wolf’s teeth. I know you made him to be      a warrior      a soldier      a hero. But even gunmetal can warp and even wolf’s teeth can dull and I do not want to see him break the way old and worn and overused things do. I do not want to see him go up in flames      the way all heroes end up martyrs. I know that you will tell me  that the world needs him. The world needs his heart      and his faith      and his courage      and his strength      and his bones and his teeth and his blood and his voice and his– The world needs anything he will give them. Damn the world,      and damn you too. Damn anyone that ever asked anything of him,      damn anyone that ever took anything from him,            damn anyone that ever prayed to his name. You know that he will give them everything      until there is nothing left of him          but the imprint of dust               where his feet once trod. You know that he will bear the world like Atlas     until his shoulders collapse          and his knees buckle               and he is crushed by all he used to carry.  Dear God,  you have already made an Atlas. You have already made an Achilles and an Icarus and a Hercules.  You have already made a sacrificial lamb of your Son. You have already made so many heroes, and you can make another again.  You can have your pick of heroes.  So please, I beg you– he is all that I have,  and you have so many heroes and the world has so many more.  Let him be soft,  and let him be mine.

At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon.