Sometimes at night
i write poems
they appear in my head
beginnings
threaded words
embroidered precisely, humble works of art
with no destiny
they disappear into the night
i swear to myself to remember
winding the words through my mind
the words travel the same routes

morning comes
and whatever routes those words traveled have faded




so, what?
if the words were so important
would i not have lazed out of sleep and into awakening?
are the small journys that my mind makes trying to anchor me in my story
are they irrelevant?
forgotten?
lost?
irretrievable?

as irretrievable as the life that was mine before all of this?
as irretrievable as the child that got lost on the merry-go-round that could not stop spinning?
where are the words?
what words can describe invisible knives that tear flesh into bits that stay whole and bloodless?
who would believe such fairy-tales anyway?

Damn,
i order the words to come filing in
like soldiers lame and lost
they refuse to reclaim their place among the living

I yell to the words
Don't you understand that i need you?
That i need you now!
I don't care if you have no blood and no flesh
I will take whatever is left of you
Your skeleton is fine too

I don't care if you have no limbs to walk on and no will to grow limbs with
Yes, i remember now
One of the words was GROW
What was i growing? There in the dark, in the fire, suffocating...
I cannot remember, maybe GROW was not one of the words at all

Then what was that spark of genius that got lost in the night?
There was a thread and a lot of darkness and suffocation that suffocated and suffocated, suffocation that suffocated like breathing sand through your lungs,
darkness penetrating suffocating ripping through my flesh
leaving no trace of blood behind

Invisible

Growing invisible
Screaming with no voice
Sand pouring down into my legs
and into my lungs

the merry-go-round of glass and razor blades
spinning suffocating drinking sand
walking under air that presses into me
gravity pushes from above
the weights press compress from above
invisible
every step is timelessness encapsulated

Words, don't you understand? I need you now! Come out from under the bed. Get out of your hiding places. I have let you live on your own for two decades. Now I need you  back. I need you back.

Serve me as I have served you.
Putting you all together.
Making you spring and sing meaning.
As a child, you played in my notebooks, you jumped like the toads... whichever way you went, you went as well, with spring on your side and life in your blood.

Come back to me now. I  need you now. Serve me please, I beg you.

Please, open the gates so that I may enter, so that i may learn, so that i may weave and rekindle, and tell and ...

may i be worthy of your magic.

Toads, toads like the letters of my childhood no longer live here.

I have returned to tell of them, of how I loved them. Of how invisible people are real.