Tuesday, December 27, 2016

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.

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