Branches Book

BRANCHES

because it pricks you and makes you bleed when all you wanted was to be held together

INSTRUCTION MANUAL i've been looking for an instruction manual at the bottom of swimming pools but i keep drowning and i can't get the water out of my lungs why is it that the people who live in the coldest places know warmth the best i'm shivering drowning i keep trying to dig myself out of the trenches i built for myself but I am stuck, on a perpetual moving walkway I close my eyes, an escape but I realize eyelids are only drapes and drapes can always be opened so the sun can come in but if I close the drapes again, maybe I will find no noise not even the hum that my heart makes when i'm falling asleep. STEEL CAGE I used to cover my walls in words that opened me up and revealed my scraped, punctured heart

and I used to show the world that I had a head made of steel and not even the bullet shaped pain being shot at my head could break me

but I think the steel in my head dripped down to my heart and built a cage around it because I can hardly feel my heart beating anymore

and now my tongue is tied around the knots in my stomach that keep me locked up

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