51 reads

What I traded in for America

Shooting my eyes across the prettiest hues, hints of miracles,

traces of history left behind each boot print made to unsettle the wintery Eden in this…

My other mystery.

Stiff backed and leaning against the giant walls made callous from my wishes

to love more

to see more

to never leave this place

reaching for a sweater left forgotten like a heart on the clothesline

left to bleed for no one and nothing but the aftermath

and nothing but the memory remains.

Fading now like bad weather, like bad skin,

like hallways mute the echo of the scream of which I screamed into and found no way back.

Expiring like the stuff of fantasy made to taunt the sleepy dreamer in her wake.

This is not a love story or a hero journey

I am held captive tricked by the steel beast,

fierce and hungry, bribing me with its promise of forever

and forever is a song.

A million miles lay out like a snake roasting in the stink of heat and I hold and grasp

but Ah! The void is truly empty

and eh! It knows me

No matter how much I believe in your wildest dreams

I knew when I felt my heart tearing from the inside watching my own surgery

hey! come look inside my chest cavity

See the exits are all blocked, that there was no way back.

But oh!

How that courtyard kept me like an etched Inferno scene

I am not a saint, or whore or any one’s mystery

I had something more than a pile of photos.

I was running my own river of thought

Remember the night? the one that opened its mouth, grinning at us from all the wrong directions

swallowed us up like a whale, mangled our luggage.

I don’t want to roll around down here for crumbs anymore

But all there is

IS THIS

All rage turned beast, and our beauty IS our ugliness

The flaw, the cut, the death… Perfect

Unimpressed in the world’s greatest theaters turn our backs at the glitter

And all we are IS THIS

Sensitive to touch

Inspired by sound

Memories that grieve us and not the other way around

If only I knew of an alphabet that doesn’t frighten me…