(Last SFYS of 2012. Here's a poem I read.)
I
came into this world kicking and shouting
the
words, “I'm invincible, I'm invincible!”
I
remember the day I realized that if I tried
hard
enough, I could touch the sky with my
trembling
fingertips. And I almost did.
Floating
through life, I ended up in a sea of
words,
with no way out. The day I learned to
use
those words, was the day I met you; White
winter
winds and chaotic silence surrounding
everything
we've ever loved.
Ink
stained fingertips are my love song to
everything
I've ever wanted. I closed my eyes
and
threw a penny in the fountain of dreams
and
came back with a wish bigger than it
could
handle, a love song much too long to do
anything
but smear the ink across pages
and
pages.
Your
wish was simple: to escape from death,
and
escaping from death is easy, if you know
the
right people. Call me your angel, I can
help
you find the secret to life in this
world
of explosions and liars.
You're
blood and bones, dying to cheat Death
out
of what she's due. But, you owe her. It's
not
going to be easy, nothing is ever easy.
I
take my lead from the people I used to know:
Fall
in love, and you'll never get anywhere
you
think you should be. You can't commit sin
if
you never fall in love with the way a person
walks
down an empty hallway, the sun hitting
their
face in just the right way.
Following
the map of our palms, running past
the
river of hope, hiking up the
skyscrapers
towards Heaven, we're headed for
salvation,
we're headed for eternity.
That
was the day you began to fed me matches,
and
I swallowed them, one by one until I felt
as
if I'd self-destruct; an atomic bomb, leaving
me
in the grasp of eternity, a skeleton who
still
remembers how to breathe.
Inhale,
Exhale. Repeat.
You
threw out the empty matchbox, and I watched
as
you picked up your dusty ribcage, blew off
the
cobwebs, and placed it back around your
heart,
where it belongs. I didn't say a word;
I
should have said something. The day you left
was
the day I fell in love.
I
was never out for blood, I was out for
someone
to want me.
It
turns out they're the same thing.
Here's to Poetry.
Forever Yours,
Rachel.
