Emily Winters                                             

“Squeezing through the cracks in my skin”

I wrote until my fingers grew numb and the Sun

Bled across the valley, saturating the ground with Its

Tender thoughts and sullied dreams - I do not believe

That when She lay down to rest, the Sun thought

Her blood could water our buried hopes.

I wrote until my pen ran dry; my bones withered,

Falling parched and barren. I myself could not imagine

The starving trees that could still manage to

Squeeze through the cracks in my skin.

I dipped my pen in the blood of the sun and went on,

Scrawling across the page and down the table and

Across the window, marking my territory with words,

Words.

My memories, scribbled in crayon up and down the

Insides of doorways, through each layer of legal pad as I

Peel it back. It reveals more and more like a coquettish

Princess, a teasing whore who senses your thrill

At the game more than anything else in this red world and

It’s a mad world. A red world. But not a big world,

Not anymore. I can feel the power lines leering and leaning

Into my window. I can see the blackbirds nesting in the crevices,

The cuticles of my fingernails and I have never felt so

Close so complete as when I danced cheek to cheek with the

Molten sky. And so I added my own blood to the melting pot and

Danced on, oblivious to the meteors, or seeing them feeling them

Apathetically as they bounced off of my imperious skin,

My pen and paper and imagination for a suit of armor…

I have never stopped to think: what would happen if

I stopped when my fingers grew numb and my mind seized and

My body seizured, flopping around like the spineless fish that I

Most likely am, underneath all of the hubris that my poetry

Grants me.

But instead of thinking, I write on, scraping my pen on the

Insides of my arm.