There is beauty here
sometimes in the trees
manicured and all in a perfect row
and the leaves change color
in unison, of an achord
but not like the place inside me
where the weeds grow tall as trees
and the trees tall as clouds
and you can't walk through the thicket
for the thorns clutching at your skin
here inside me gnats swarm your face
and the sun cooks you
from the inside out
the air is so thick and wet
that it forms droplets on your lips
and in your lungs with every breath.

There is peace to be had here
with all the conveniences of proximity
and all the assurances of human bodies
but here deep inside me
the silence exhales around you
like an old woman with memories for bones
and swirling tendrils of dust for breath
here everything sits so perfectly still
with the finality of death
but the expectancy of a birth
that never comes to pass
here within me is eternal pregnancy
and unending strings of miscarriages.

Here there is a way, some way
for a woman to struggle through life
for a mother to cry silently at night
because who would argue her right
there is strength to be found
so that you can pick yourself up
at the beginning of each day
and fight for survival
because it's the American way
but looking inside me
I see not even the will to cry
the color that fills me
is so faint that it does not exist
not white, not black, just nothingness
sitting just under my skin and bones
is a child who never should have had a heart
is a woman who never should have lived
is a boy who never should have died
this place within me has been abandoned
and left to the ghost and creaking floors
left to the only soul foolish enough to remain.

Here there is hope for the future
there is the pain of failure
but also the hope of falling in love
there is the stabbing relentlessness of betrayal
but maybe just a chance for redemption
but within me, I sit half present
and every day I beg the world
to just go away and leave me alone
so that I don't have to trust
so that I don't have to love
so that I don't have to live.