#laumei

May 4, 2022:

Pink Secondary, Tundra, Okapi.

Upolu, Samoa.

Photographer: Caroline Bell of Laumei Photography 

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I run  with knives in my mouth

soft bones of poetry slide off the fat you possessed.

Tomorrow; a pressed flower in the back of your book

and I don't know when we were where I told you that there's silver in a voice's coin

you only laughed with                  at me

I could've smiled but I didn't. I run with knives in my mouth

and black blood spilled over the white of my teeth.

  I see your eyes uncertainty flanked in corners

inverting tear ducts by a glaze

they’re kind of awesome I guess.

they can hide a thought in the webbed greet of eyelashes

so no one will belittle the freedom of a mind

that’s afraid of drowning or being drowned.

they don’t bleed like a culture’s time of the month

but screen-print red tapa patterns

in flecks of your iris

a flower instead of a weed.

They architect buildings out of unspoken words

no one’s walked into the house but everyone’s knocked on the door,

you hide behind the curtains

so you can’t see past ocean floor

the shadows have thrown themselves on you

you’re in the deep already

look up and you’ll find the clearing ribcaged by sunlight

like the water fear moves.

swim on.

Like being jumped

by some hoodrat

on the side of a busy road

headlights blink and turn blind

eyes crying with laughter at the joke; her