Speak For Yourself

(Or the time I paid a lot of money to be published in a real, live, poetry book.)

Hey kids, this is for real. Speak For Yourself is publishing a book. And a lot of amazing poets are in it.  Buy one, maybe?

Okay, that's all.

Here's one of the poems I read at Thursday's poetry slam:

November 12.

Nineteen years, 31 days, and I'm still breathing

the same air I've always tasted,

clouds and oxygen tainted
with flecks of a blue-green mist.

This isn't the first time I've wondered what the world is made of,

and it isn't the second time, either.

And I mean, what is the earth made of, beside dirt and clouds we can't touch?

I'm counting leaves that fall off the trees,

because every winter everything dies.

Everything dies and we all die just a little bit more every day.

This isn't a cry for salvation, everyone know you have to

whisper for salvation.

You have to try without asking, earn those angel wings on your own.

You can't cheat on this one.

My hands are turning purple.

Touch me again and I might crack

into a thousand slivers of ice covered in blood.

I need you to keep your distance,

and I need you to breathe out my name every day,

even a small whisper will do, darling.

I've cried out your name in my dreams

3 nights; 87 times.

I just need your hand to hold mine,

because I found out what the sky tastes like,

it tastes like a hallelujah.

But this, this right now, this is what a hallelujah looks like.

This is what a hallelujah feels like.

Yeah, I'm a coward who's afraid of fear and hope and rejection and you

But I'm a coward who's touched the ice with bare fingertips,

only to find herself inside of a miracle.

So here's to you, darling.

Hallelujah.

Forever Yours,

Rachel.