Small

Small

There are so many ways of dying to

believe yourself alive.

Bottles meet lips

fists meet wall

blades meet skin

food meets mouth - or doesn't -

fingers move to back of throat.

And when I wake, my body begs me

for a second chance.

Always too small and too

large for this world, I have only ever wanted to

bring myself to life.

To breathe inside this skin without

the ghosts who try to live here:

there is a constricting spaciousness in silence that

shrinks me smaller until I am

nothing - this physical body is too large,

takes up

too much

space --

this place of small is

familiar and

gives the ghosts the space they need to

inhabit this too-much, this

not-enough, this --

I wonder if

impossibility

is the only way I know to love myself.

Wonder if the only way I can be small

enough is by not

speaking, 

ridding myself of heart or

brain or

body, I let the

ghosts fill my empty spaces.

There are so many ways of dying to

keep yourself alive.

Shaking voice forms truths too

holy for silence, too

holy for speaking.

Coded tongues drop words from

bitten lips:

oh, Impossible One --

there is courage here

even when
everything 

shatters.