paper pulse
I am building a body out of ink
because the one I was born with is failing.
I have learned that bone is brittle and breath is a loan,
but a stanza, a stanza is a fortress
that doesn't know how to die.
I write for the living, because they are the witnesses.
I write to turn my fleeting warmth
into something you can touch when I am cold.
If I can describe the exact color of the morning,
if I can trap my heartbeat in a rhythm of seventeen syllables,
then I haven’t truly left the room.
I am a gardener planting seeds in a yard
I will never get to sit in.
Every line is a heartbeat I’ve traded away.
Every page is a bribe for the future,
a plea for someone, somewhere, to say my name
and feel the vibration of a dead man’s voice.
I am running out of ink, out of air, out of light—
frantically pasting myself into the pages,
terrified that if I stop for even a moment,
the silence will finally catch up to me.
I am not writing to be celebrated, but to be kept;
I am writing so that when the world finishes me,
there is still a stain on the floor that proves I stood here.