in my dreams,
I am in the place I left,
an abandoned knot of string
cut into too many ends,
too many to untangle,
tightening to strangle
future breath from my neck.
a ghost that cannot be put to rest,
a song, missing the final cadence at its end,
a bird trapped, screaming, by a loose branch
in its nest,
wings flapping,
flying without ever moving from its home.
you can take me from my nightmares,
but you can't take the nightmares from me.
their faces are my penance, forever burned into my
skin, branded,
and never healed into a scar,
chains tangled around my ankles,
weight that gets heavier the more I climb.
I got to escape,
but their souls never will. squashed, slashed,
smashed into rubble, crashed,
thrown against concrete,
bleeding, blood seeping, life sleeping.
too choked to breathe,
too blinded to see,
too deafened to hear,
disturbed to sleep, the street
not a habitat,
but simply an enclosure-
the sky barred on all sides,
by geometric horizons.
Summer 2018
YOU ARE READING
Unbroken • Poetry
Poetryeven the leaves will not break beneath her touch "All art is quite useless." - Oscar Wilde
