Do you know what it feels like,

To run your fingers through the freshly shorn grass

Behind your ears,

For the first time,

And to feel the steady crackle of your heartbeat,

Burning like a hearth, like home.

 

Do you know what it feels like,

To press your fingers

Against your chest

Just underneath the red that stains your ribcage

And to cry tears of joy

Because there are no rolling hills in this river valley

There are only grasslands and plateaus and the icy stretch marks that ripple across melting snowcaps.

 

Do you know what it feels like, to watch the wind blow across the plains of your legs,

And to see the tall grass amidst the moon-glow,

And to touch the chemical trails that grace your knees, and say,

“I love even you.”

 

I do.

 

These seasons have not been kind to me, but I know.

 

There are craters in my lungs, and bruises across the apple orchards of my arms, and red clay and terra cotta where mountains once stood atop my chest,

But they are gone, and I am free.

I know what it feels like,

To place all hope in another,

To watch them like the stars watch the universe

Cold and calm and about to implode into a supernova

As they give way to the universe’s entropy,

As they take your light and your planets,

And say that they do not exist,

Because they are not visible to the naked eye.

 

My continents shifted this past year,

And the ridges in my oceans gave way

To magma and steam.

The Appalachians that rest upon my breast,

Have been mined for their resources

And their products sanded down

By my hands

Into beautiful

Beautiful

Coal

That puffs out of my chest,

In the winter-time.

 

I cannot wait,

To rub my fingers

Upon the veins of ruby that I have mined

In the hopes that

I will live long enough

For alchemy

To turn them into

Silver.