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