We Are Silent Skin Waiting to Sing

We Are Silent Skin Waiting to Sing

Red Fruit

Nobody ever begins from where it hurts. 
Overcome with ache, have we not lived 

our lives thinking ourselves whole? Have we 
not thought the echoes our hymn of being 

complete? Look at the flowers. How they wait
patiently in the morning for the red sun.

Listen to their threnodies, all that yearning.
Because we have been nothing but bodies. 

Nothing but wraps of skin waiting to be 
filled with music—and every time we 

kissed, another chorus unfurled. I was lost 
to the symphony of our flesh and lips. 

Because love greets a body soft like a finger
seeking only to open. Soft like flowers

warming to the red sun. And did we not 
open? Did we not arise out of the earth 

woundless and whole? We were slick, and 
the world was newborn. O, we were alive. 

And there were hearts beating in us. 
In that night so white and verdant, 

nothing mourned. Such sweet thing it is 
to be complete. And so what? If we be 

but lambs running through love's vast 
fields, then let us run. I have tasted 

the silence. I have tasted the song. I know 
now what is worthy of being kept, 

what is worthy of being lived through. 
I know now the point where the music 

begins to rain. Where we 
begin to sing

Anti—

The night trudges on. A father teaches his
daughter, albeit feebly, to ride the bicycle. 

Watch her dabble in her fields of joy. Full
of glee, her wounds still empty of knees. 

At some point, the father gets on the bike,
and over the tarmac wings unfurl. His body 

cutting into space—and she, stuck on Earth,
staring. The longing soaking us like hot water. 

A longing so forlorn. Like how I have stared
at my life—this weak thing, aching for flight. 

To escape the dark jungle of my country, my
birthland. I do not wish to be devoured. Do 

not wish to be yet another sacrifice to another
abdominal god. At least the headlights held us 

with mercy. All of that brilliance beholding
flesh. No wonder the deer see them as 

salvation, even as their bodies greet the metal.
And are they wrong? What have we garnered

from all our years of living in the dark? What
have we gathered if not these bodies clawed

and torn? I do not wish to be devoured. Our
youth was not meant to be spent evading 

wolves. Darling, I know you tire of my
lament. You hope that someday I would 

write a poem about this country. Sing 
of her beauty, praise her magnificence. 

But are we not wounded? How much flattery
can unlatch from the prey the predator’s jaw? 

We will tell ourselves these lies tomorrow. But
for now, sit, let us dwell on the blood staining

everywhere. Let us talk about our country,
and her ferocity. Her howls, her sharp teeth.