In skin of paper

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Some things go on paper, some know crumple before their inkbirths,

like some part of a wish, heard by someone,

to make fate a conspiracy of strangers.

Things that seep in without being ticklish, measuring

your depths with invented scale- don't go on paper-

crooked lines on father foreheads, mothers' disguised

hurt, trapped birds unclipped and their fear of flight,

their songs of gunpowder morning

and hungry animals

in 250 sq ft apartments only talking of dawns.

The paper is proud, like the sea when it knows

that you cannot guess the other end, so you

whisper darkness in comic sans and say-

some stories are better when the lantern dies,

when paper and shadows make double helices

with fragile frequencies.

~Ajay
22/3/19

seaboyman ~ poetryWhere stories live. Discover now