Your hand is all I have to keep me hanging on

This is our world

where we put a rose on the head of a decapitated human

to pretentiously capture the strife

of an unimaginable iniquity

for which there are no words.

This is our world

where 8 months after an incomparable genocide

we repost an AI image

a tawdry acrylic over massacre

cupronickel from the bullet to make it irradiant

while white people

learn extra

to sit in silence

with Tibetan flags

claiming the whole color spectrum

but only in a way that suits them.

They say we all have the same sky

but how can we

I swear in the West

our corporations weld it

an extra cyan

while ignoring science

while the rest of the world’s

is infused with arsine

warnings a nescient opal

masquerading as a colony of gulls.

Emma Lazarus said

“None of us are free ‘til all of us are free,”

but no one listened—

violence begets violence

and the people who claim to be the most free

are the most defended

I wish I could incise through a soul

as easily as a plane blade slices through the air

but now I just wish the earth would tear

and guzzle us all in

Tonight it looked like a spotlight

we existed somewhere in some calcifications

and I know no one else could see it

the marrow embedded in cradling carapace

white blood cells

carbonated cerulean

everyone sees it as a reflection of the sea

but not the empty flecks of carophy

or the decomposed castles of geomancy

not a vacuum to wrap your arms around

because there is nothing left in the surrounding

not a sigh crocheted in the crests of the cirrus