Through Falling Skies

The dust falls

upon my resting body

while you renovate upstairs with new dirt,

new purpose,

my fears silently amplified

deep in the hole I’ve dug again.

I remember asking once

if you’d be there to bury me.

After blushing, you said nothing

and I held the confusion close

to my freezing chest.

Thudding drum loops spur me on,

the woozy wheezing of worn out bodies

begging to be carried

the next few steps.

I take a knee to tell them that I just don’t have the strength.

The cranes dip low lately

and they steal the land my feet thirst for.

Unquenched, they leave the Earth behind

and climb stretching stairs towards a peaceful existence

the sky open,

a gorgeous, gently blinding white

inexplicable but comforting

somewhere above, obscured, distant but

warm

but the dust falls again

and I’m still claustrophobic

in the burning heat of this prison

rotting, rotting, rotting

clawing at the ground, at the darkest corners

of thought,

desperate for escape

almost all of the time.

Lying in the cold waters,

giving anything to be carried away,

caressed by the tides, shifting along towards

somewhere warmer, with greener grass,

refusing to accept that the problem is internal,

refusing to accept that the problem was you,

refusing to accept the problem

at all.

My ruptured bones

crack now like glass

and I’ve lost too many fragments

to time

to rebuild.

When they try to stop my body from leaving,

the connection will be fried

and I will ascend

bursting through the falling skies

projecting broken dreams

and a galaxy of memories

onto crumbling buildings

kaleidoscopic as I enter the long sleep, scathed

but (maybe)

healing.