Ash

There’s a pile of ash in my bed,

where I left it to serve as a grave for the fire.

At the seam, you know I'm weakest.

My bleeding leads you here, and you never tire.

Had I lost you on the wild path?

Forging pacts in stone- you know how hard that gets,

but do you know how much you’re risking

chasing my ghost into the wilderness?

Bedrock, silent,

let me ebb until I'm

blind and deaf, deaf and dumb.

The night, tonight is smothered and drowned.

Bedrock buried me,

held me to the earth and made me

deaf and blind, blind and numb.

Follow me into the empty.

You’ll never know how I’ve preyed,

how I’ve shielded the desert upon my tongue.

When I hold my breath, I'm weightless.

There is safety in sight when the morning comes.

I turn my crooked back to the wind.

Won’t the ground give way to the weight of my plea?

The chasm opens, hungry,

and in time it will swallow everything.

I‘ve lost your star

How was it so small and heavy?

Taking time, passing through,

colliding in the sky in secret.

You held a lie, I set it free.

Even in my dreams, I’m weary.

How could I have given you

the thumping of my foreign heartbeat?

You held a lie, bound the truth,

and dressed it in a shroud of mystery.

Now I pull apart the roots,

leaving them to dry in the air.

I cut my teeth making bets,

reaching in past thorns and thickets,

but you don’t see the bleeding hands-

just the window they’ve torn open.

Plant a tree, bear the fruit.

Take the seed and spill it freely.

As the ash fills this room,

I find the bedrock buried me-

I’m home.