I carry each day with a sharp and shattered breath.
My chest distends with every “good” every “okay”,
and walking above the vast and rhythmic chasm,
I stride across with rocks in the sockets of my eyes,
with tar in my lungs,
and sand in my limbs.
My veins bulge like roots in the soil of my skin
and my heart rattles with prolonged insistence
from a long day’s draw.
But I will wait.
I will only ease my swollen heart if the silken stars
rise to clot the sky, and the sun deflates
of puncture wounds.
It is then that I will tap the ashes of my lifeline
and cough as my lungs will roar.
It is in the enclosing darkness and definite gravity
of the night that my dreams will breathe air
into my blue lips and I will rise to meet the surface
of a sleeping, stirring sea.