Unbutton the sky from your shoulders.
Fold it once, then twice.
Bury it beneath the porch where the bees once slept.
No one finds what the bees forget.
Feed the house your name.
Let it suck the vowels from your wrists.
You will taste rust for seven nights.
Swallow. Do not spit.
Chalk a doorway where no wall exists.
Step through backward.
Leave your shadow behind—
nail it to the lintel with a mother’s pin.
Collect tears that never fell.
Find them in the linens, the cellar stone,
the pie crust she burned the morning he left.
Mix them with ground wasp wings and whisper to the mixture,
“I do not belong.”
Hang your reflection in a dogwood tree.
Let it ripen, split, and rot.
The birds will not touch it.
This is good. This means you are fading.
Light a match inside your mouth.
Hold the flame against your last memory.
When it screams, laugh.
When it weeps, bite.
Speak to the river in the language of drownings.
Use no words. Only the rhythm of boots
tossed in mud, and the silence of chairs
still rocking long after supper.
Thread a needle with hair from the back of your throat.
Sew shut every eye that once looked at you kindly.
They will dream of you.
But only in colors the living cannot name.
Press your ear to the moss-grown fencepost.
Listen until you hear the year break open.
Step through the crack.
Do not flinch when it smells like your grandmother’s hands.
Kneel at the hush.
Not silence—hush.
The thing before silence.
The hush that follows a lie that landed true.
Take root.
Forget your skin.
Become the part of the field
they plow around.
About the Creator
Taylor Ward
From a small town, I find joy and grace in my trauma and difficulties. My life, shaped by loss and adversity, fuels my creativity. Each piece written over period in my life, one unlike the last. These words sometimes my only emotion.
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Comments (1)
Winner!!! 🥇