#userastrae

mother, the air was a funny color today. smelled like cold but the sky was warm and the snow that fell was more like salt. i spent the night above a cold lightbulb, swung back and forth on stairways suspended under a fire sky. mother, i’ve never lost friction on pavement before but today the earth lost its grip on me and i hit my head, and ribs, and back on the way down. i’m okay but the ground still worries me - i think the sidewalk wants to eat me, so i stick to the streets. mother, today i burned for a woman. the air filled with fire and i swallowed it for her, matchstick and all. it’s still writhing in my lungs and it coats the outside of the nitrogen it can’t burn. my oxygen supply is dwindling. mother, today my world collapsed from 5 gunshots. i felt them in my wrist, in my chest, against my skull. there are bullets lodged in my bones and every time i move they split open just a little more. i’m going to splinter like wood around a nail. mother, we are all plucked flowers, every one of us. beauty wilts and petals rot before my very eyes; kisses are filled with horror now, and i taste death in the throats of men. i watch and my hands turn aside as daisies fill with ash from the inside out. mother, they hide from the lilies of our funerals. burrow under the warmth and safety of regression, but i swear to God, i’ll snatch the quilt from over them and leave them trembling, naked, see how they like it. what does it feel like to be me? i’m going to make them a cover they can’t hide under and spread it across the grass like a picnic blanket, crushing dandelions. mother, i’m sorry i shouted. i spread the blanket quietly, instead, and invited everyone out for a sunlit picnic. we were the ants, but we moved around like ghosts. we counted our footsteps until we could find our way out, but none of us left.

you are the poetry i never could write