rough drafts.

adalet

Sprigs of green between pavement cracks once the ice melts. The earth always remembers, no matter what form we bend it to. Life finds a way, and we’ll never see it coming, the revolution beneath our feet. Sleeper cells in the dark, waiting for the right moment to begin again. I’ve never had a green thumb, just one corner of my heart where there’s always just one more thing to try. From one solitary stem, suddenly: bright-colored bells bloom to life, pink petals turning toward sun. Maybe flowers can’t repair old scars, but the ground still knows softness. maybe we don’t need a sidewalk so much as a garden.

you’re a meteor, a bright falling star, burning across the atmosphere like a dying wish. scorch marks come as no surprise; what’s a shock is living to tell the tale, nothing to show but the ozone smell and looking a real goddamn mess. everyone knows what to do with a hero who comes home on her shield, but when you’re walking no one knows what to say. The stars carve themselves a red pattern across your skin, a souvenir, a reminder, a lesson you could spend your whole life trying to unlearn. but: that’s longer than you thought.

Kintsugi is for anyone who can afford gold. All we had was tape, I guess, but who can dance in this? Making do like it’s a national sport, priding ourselves on our coupon-clipping. Maybe wings can form in this cocoon but what use are wings inside a duct-tape prison? To break the shell seems like breaking the whole world and maybe we should. Maybe that vase just sucked, anyway.

I write myself lipstick messages on the mirror, and pretend it was the ghost. GET OUT and YOU’RE NEXT to have some excitement to look forward to. I always work best under pressure. The ghost is quiet and not so easily upset; I just think how she’d feel. Easier on her behalf than on mine to lie in wait on new moon nights, white dress dyed vengeful. Don’t you know blood already stains all my insides? A thousand cuts feels barely like a pinprick. I can’t dress this phantom wound, address a cut deeper than my lifelines. I guess this is why ghosts get so mad that they’ll haunt just anybody, when all the culprits are safely six feet under.

quiet humming in the dark the first sounds never quite leave you though you can’t recall the tune. that song you hate is a real earworm, well past welcome with nowhere to go. the next verse was better, I thought but looked up the real words and didn’t know them. was I taught wrong, or can we say this is better. the echo becomes the song, becomes the story. someday the only record will be what I remember. history is written by the survivors— history is the survivors. I just want to know who not to forgive