there is a passenger
                                    that sits          in a waiting room
                                                                        arms loaded          with a bouquet of dead flowers               forgotten by sun too soon

                                                                                      there are elegies written into the cracks              of two-dollar linoleum tiles      jaundiced

by the weight of a fracture too wide      to propose new skin      to hold these bodies together

it was the year the government shut down
the year i saw the branches dangle      in the air debarked
& still gnawed on the naked limb          a pale wood      looking for a deep deep sweet
that had long dried up
              this mouth parched for long dusty with disdain

fluorescent lights burn into the wood of me        that fiery place roaring with a sharp lurch of flames
             awaiting waters to rush in          to release the torrent    whirring in my body
             in a shut room filled with an echo of coughs smacking against the wall of my chest
children hushed into a wait a still          there are not enough vowels to hold the lack
                                                                                   meet with
                                                                                                                                                               wait
                                                        a fist knots tighter
                                                        a ticking bomb leaving the body a biohazard
                                                                     no pockets of sound are allowed here
please take a ticket and be seated
                                                        wait

                                                        pause into a still image       a framed picture

                                                        that breaks the cast

                                                        that has not healed
                                                        the ligament it was made for
                            to be birthed into land & marked a weed a nuisance to sunlight
                            but instead a foreign fruit
             in a frozen climate
                            where any other season has become a distant pang
             a fallow grain
                            i sang out the melody of those who came long before me
             with my ruddied knees because
....there were days for us too
             for every forgotten queer     for every decimal i have been made into

                            to know there is a place in which my shell could open
                                                                      into a propelling motion

                                                                      a ladybug taking to air