Simple
I like to breathe.
I like to remind myself
with each lungful of air
that I am alive
and thus, I can die
any second
so I try to live life
moment
by
moment.
I like electricity
sparking in the air
and dancing across my skin
like frenzied ballerinas in red shoes.
I like to curl my toes in the dirt
and pretend I am a tree,
that I use sunlight for feed
so I do not need you.
And I do not need me.
I can just be.
I like to slip out of this
fractured shell that is
human being
and go flying across continents,
look down and see
that people are people no matter nationality.
I read a lot of thick books when I was younger
and it screwed up my mentality.
But I have been borrowing words
from poets and people who know more than me
since I learned to tell the difference between
your palm and mine.
Now I shape words until I can copyright
my rights to them - they belong to me
but I think it's silly
the way we believe
we can own things.
We frame mountains and landscapes
that only God can hold in his hands and
we declare artwork fitting
to adorn our pockmarked walls and
When we fall in love
we steal hearts
we claim a part of someone’s pulse
and fit our name into two syllables.
My head is still reeling
from the fact there is a flag on the moon
with my country's name on it
something only twelve people have touched
we are notorious for claiming.
But I and you halfway across the world
are viewing the same celestial rock
hovering.
keeping watch,
naked but for
a flag - an attempt to still
a frigid battle - too much.
When I was little, I read the dictionary.
I figured it had all the other books within it.
I'm still confounded by the idea that
all of its words were once
nonsensical gibberish
coming out through the voice of some lunatic
words like love, peace, promise, tomorrow,
hope.
How they must have tasted in the first unsteady throats
yet now we fling and flash them like peacetime propaganda and collar bones
And how can I By Line the same phrases
the wordsmiths before me did?
How can I stamp a claim
on the music that is
these handful of letters strung together
to adorn the fragile beating of my stupid heart?
I was born with faith in humanity
but school lessons taught me differently.
English teachers would hand me
proof of mankind's monstrosity -
"the human condition."
I spent twelve years of my life crying myself to sleep.
I wish I could explain how
my heart beats for everyone individually.
I have probably whispered your name in my
Dreams.
But I hold no claim to the way
I’ve been built and broken on this earth
in this world -
I am a broken girl
but I still love to feel the sun on my face
and the sky blue at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
I stand still in the rain storm
waiting for lightning
and reminding myself to
Breathe.