izzy

learn that I do not *need* anyone or anything
except for food and water and sunshine and to move around

put my palm to your palm when I can
and together our two hands will make a mutant but beautiful fist

wear eyeliner and disco pants and whatever I want
because sometimes it’s good to feel cool, whatever you think that is

never let go of the things with feathers that perch in me
and let go of everything else that doesn’t seem to matter or fly with me

tell you all the things I think, even though I probably shouldn’t
and know that it’s ok to change my mind or be contradictory

walk down the street writing couplets that don’t rhyme in my head
and requiems and eulogies because even that, even dying, is part of this walking here too

talk to you like this is the first time, the last time, the only time,
and trace the outline of your lips with the cursor on my computer screen

feel like maybe it is a bit harsh to judge a story by its first line but not read it anyway
because who has time for ‘Having personally smoked about a gram of crack cocaine…’

become a person who is entirely made of fireworks, forever exploding
and somehow magically restocked from the inside, or wherever

*

sarah

Cracks are forming at the edges of these walls
The plaster mawing and sneering black
If god has his way, the whole world will shatter thus
And he may dust the rubble down and set to rebuilding
But we small creatures, we huddle together
And hide our faces from the horror
That slides in wicked from a place far away
Full of water and sand and fear and glass
And over the distance, we hear crying voices
And see the panic and teeth and flesh and death
Creeping into the space at the back of our eyes
We, the children of the revolution
Who never unlearned enough to riot
Whose voices are plunged into cotton wool throats
And are lost there, as the day plummets out of the sky.
But our fists, which have never once tasted of blood
In the darkness, remember what it is to say no.
So we, the quiet guilty, hold a fire in the night
And with our hands pressed together
Through our smartphone screens
We hold a vigil for a man we never knew
We build a new ritual of light and of text
And we pour out the words again and again:
He had a name. He had a name. He had a name.
And somehow, soft and lost and hopeless
We try to sing him home.

*