I do not like the way the word feels on my lips.
How something can tug so heavily on my limbs.
How something so void can feel just like sadness sometimes,
How i fold myself up behind bookshelves, where the dust sits thicker in tiny corners the broom can't reach.
And other times
Like parties
And smiles
And laughter.
I do not like the way the word sits in my chest.
Like a cement-laid shadow, and like the ghost of an elephant– It steps on my lungs
I am smothered and extinguished.
I do not like that I am a remnant of summertime,
A shining face without a smile.
I do not like the way they press it to pages,
The way pages crease when it is breathed through pretty girls
The way they speak it as if it is their name.
Lined in cigarette smoke and wilted flower petals,
but at some point,
you must pull the dead flowers from your garden bed out
from where they had planned to stay for an eternity.
recovery is not found
while bathing in defeat
but by blooming again.
