Speak for Yourself.

(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.