Don’t tell me nothing
or turn in my face
hard enough for the
wind to stop flowing
and instead follow
your whims.

You used to hold my hand up to the sky.
When the air was still golden
and the vapor still coal before pressure
and you used to grab my wrist.
Right at the veins
your fingerprints on my blood.

You used to trace the rivers
of ivory
down my spine.
You used to hold me up to the moon
with grace. And hope
so much hope
that the moisture crystalized around us
with the sheer stress of it all.

My face would pale
hair caught in the gale
skin from tan to tin
and then, I would grin
A big wide thing
that sung a tune I sing
only sometimes
with dark, silly rhymes
echoed in my writing.
Gold in the dawn lighting.

You dropped me last year.
like a dove from the heavens
descended as a blessing
but with wings snapped
straight in half
to prevent me from breaking
my own fall to hell.

You gave me a laurel.
Called me a king.
I felt nothing like it, though.
I just learned how to fly again.