The world breaks in whispers,

you can hear it in the way we love

like cracked ribs and black coffee

we don't believe in anything

but still die like martyrs

just a bunch of broken people trying to keep from getting forgotten about,

so we run across the horizon in the failing sun

too fast and too fickle to show us where we came from.

We are a mess of backlight highways

and rundown waffle houses,

we are unmarked gravesites,

and pressed flowers in a beaten bible,

next to the one verse you can still trust.

We are thin skin covering nothing but shaking wishbones

break us to make us stronger.

I wish we could all dance together.

The earth would play new wave reggae,

garage rock or soft lullabies

and we would listen with our whole bodies

tuned to the key of luminescent beauty

we will dance,

in sticky feet on blades of grass

slotted between warm toes and we will

drink from the rim of the sky when it’s the color of hard crimson

and my heart

listen to the rain beat down

and don’t tell me it doesn’t sound like everything we’ve ever lost

is finally running back home.

Let me be that part of the poem,

the part where we are driving 80 miles an hour down the freeway

screaming about how love doesn’t exist,

and I am listening with my whole body

to the heartstrings dangling from our backs,

all out of tune

and humming softly.

we are gospel choirs,

we are a thousand hallelujahs at daybreak,

we are that sweet, southern rots-your-teeth-tea,

and butterfly wings.

we are fragile,

we are spinning,

but thank God,

we are still here.