Thursday, November 1, 2012

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.

1 comment:

  1. I love this. I am so bummed I couldn't come to SFYS and hear you perform this. I hope you are enjoying college! French is definitely not the same without you :)

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