I write because I’m a bird underwater

my feathers yearning for the day they become gills

my wings learning to swim

since the day that I learned the human race kills

and then rebuilds their cities with the bodies

with eyes lifeless and hands folded in  prayer

I want to learn how to breathe every single kind of air

 

And I write because

I want to write my way to every window sill

That has never believed in the moon

Because some windows are the eyes cut into the tomb

of 21st century hope

Because wax and wane are the heartbeats of dreams

I’ll write the sky into my back pocket and I’ll write the stitches into your seems

 

And I want to write the skeleton out of the closet

And I want to give it a name

Fear is just a four letter word

And I want to write it up out of the soil

I want to write love out of shame

And I’ll write tongues and teeth the color of sin

Until I begin

To swallow your inhibitions with the ink inside my pen

 

 

I want to write the holes into holy water

I want to write the heart into the brutal slaughter

And I will spell b r e a t h e back into the victims lungs

I’ll write a blessing of transparency

baptize me in the honesty

of the gun that was too scared to fire

no one imagines saying goodbye to the ashes of a funeral pyre

 

 

I don’t want to write the fall in your love story

I want to write the part where you hit the ground

I want to write the shatter. I want to write the sound

Of waking up ashamed of your privileges

Wishing you could give them away

And each night, I write myself to the next day

I write my sunrise every morning

I write the hate mail to mourning the loss of

Of the things you never wanted to say goodbye to

 

I want to write to the edges and into the corners

Of a body that has stopped believing in dreaming

I want to write the pulse into veins that forget

Their first day on earth tasted like breathing

Breathing that tasted like stars

And disaster

I write because most stories don’t end in happily ever after

 

I write because I’m a fish in the sky

My scales yearning to become lungs

My fins learning to fly

We’re all dying the moment that we

Begin our lives

I want to write the end of stories

And I want to write part where living arrives