{ choose life } perry & russell
Jul 16, 2018 18:08:31 GMT -5
Post by fox on Jul 16, 2018 18:08:31 GMT -5
P E R R Y
► ► ►
it’s one a.m., somewhere.
i hurt my hands, let go,
fall a million feet into the soft void below.
peregrine gives me bird wings, an epithet dad thought was so fucking hilarious at five while i upturned all the furniture in the house, jumping from chair to chair screaming the floor is fucking lava.
but i wake up in my bed every night, and feel so lost, here, feathers clipped between the mornings.
a minute goes by --
i think there’s a plant kingdom growing from the bridge where my lungs meet, green and pervasive in every breath, a garden overgrown at each exhale.
where was i buried?
someday i’ll be okay. there are worse things in life than feeling sad for no reason, i guess -- there’s the world we live in, a place where girls wonder what it’s like to die, men with their jobs turned into stamped notices from the government, sitting outside dilapidated cafes blowing cigarette smoke curling with the shame of going home, stray cats biting their own tails for something to eat.
the are worse things than lying awake in the middle of the night.
there’s your sister getting reaped and
someone else volunteering.
life is strange. these days i blow all my allowance on cigarettes, sweets for my siblings, people hanging out in alleys with weird capitol electronics playing illegal tapes you can pay a dollar to listen to -- the sound of dust and scratches and music that’s like nothing else. buying contraband and coming home after dusk, they say, “you don’t know how bad it gets, kid, stay in school.”
i’m almost eighteen,
in a year of more than twelve moons.
one fifteen a.m., i pull on a shirt, prop open the window, look down into my backyard with a lighter in my pocket. my muscles have a memory of climbing down the drain pipe a hundred times before, being pulled the last few steps by gravity in my stomach hitting hard, falling from a vertigo that tastes like venom. taller than abraham now, and fuck, i never knew what to do with extra inches of aristocracy, some thought of a distant empire upholding a name without a ruler.
i can see mercury in retrograde. i know the treelines, the district square, the swimming pools, the summer like i know the spidery scars on the back of my hand, my mom always crying over my rusted bandaids, the dirt on my clothes, the way i disappeared and reappeared like putting on a new skin, old ones wearing at the knuckles to the wilderness.
i used to read myself bedtime stories -- knights killing monsters and adventures in beautiful places with oceans, valleys, pictures that looked like the stuff of dreams. district seven used to be pretty a long time ago. i don’t know why i still sneak out at night, why i still sit up on branches, on the roof, chucking orange cigarette butts one after the other like i’m looking for a reason why it’s hard to breathe.
but the are worse things in life than staring out the window of a bar of only three people.
i hurt my hands, let go,
fall a million feet into the soft void below.
peregrine gives me bird wings, an epithet dad thought was so fucking hilarious at five while i upturned all the furniture in the house, jumping from chair to chair screaming the floor is fucking lava.
but i wake up in my bed every night, and feel so lost, here, feathers clipped between the mornings.
a minute goes by --
i think there’s a plant kingdom growing from the bridge where my lungs meet, green and pervasive in every breath, a garden overgrown at each exhale.
where was i buried?
someday i’ll be okay. there are worse things in life than feeling sad for no reason, i guess -- there’s the world we live in, a place where girls wonder what it’s like to die, men with their jobs turned into stamped notices from the government, sitting outside dilapidated cafes blowing cigarette smoke curling with the shame of going home, stray cats biting their own tails for something to eat.
the are worse things than lying awake in the middle of the night.
there’s your sister getting reaped and
someone else volunteering.
life is strange. these days i blow all my allowance on cigarettes, sweets for my siblings, people hanging out in alleys with weird capitol electronics playing illegal tapes you can pay a dollar to listen to -- the sound of dust and scratches and music that’s like nothing else. buying contraband and coming home after dusk, they say, “you don’t know how bad it gets, kid, stay in school.”
i’m almost eighteen,
in a year of more than twelve moons.
one fifteen a.m., i pull on a shirt, prop open the window, look down into my backyard with a lighter in my pocket. my muscles have a memory of climbing down the drain pipe a hundred times before, being pulled the last few steps by gravity in my stomach hitting hard, falling from a vertigo that tastes like venom. taller than abraham now, and fuck, i never knew what to do with extra inches of aristocracy, some thought of a distant empire upholding a name without a ruler.
i can see mercury in retrograde. i know the treelines, the district square, the swimming pools, the summer like i know the spidery scars on the back of my hand, my mom always crying over my rusted bandaids, the dirt on my clothes, the way i disappeared and reappeared like putting on a new skin, old ones wearing at the knuckles to the wilderness.
i used to read myself bedtime stories -- knights killing monsters and adventures in beautiful places with oceans, valleys, pictures that looked like the stuff of dreams. district seven used to be pretty a long time ago. i don’t know why i still sneak out at night, why i still sit up on branches, on the roof, chucking orange cigarette butts one after the other like i’m looking for a reason why it’s hard to breathe.
but the are worse things in life than staring out the window of a bar of only three people.
