BLUEBIRD

I have nights

I get in fights

with the spirits

that torture me.

I argue with them

while I try to sleep.

They curse me,

but I have better prayers now.

They are truer.

Suffering made me fluent.

I do not pray to be spared anymore.

I pray like a wound,

slowly closing.

Red at the edges but alive.

I pray with nothing left

but the will to survive.

I nurture the ghost that haunts.

A bluebird between my palms.

I press my thumbs

to its heart

to feel it beat.

Fear is no longer an enemy.

It is a creature asking to be held.

I pray for the strength

to keep cradling the fragile thing

through the longest night.

Until dawn arrives,

and the bluebird remembers its wings.

And I keep praying

It will teach me how to sing.

BIRTHDAY PARTY

It was Easter,

when the sky cracked open

and the voices poured in.

Telling me I was chosen,

telling me I was cursed.

telling me everything

except how to come back.

No one saw the moment

I began to go missing.

It wasn’t sudden.

Just a slow blur

at the edges of things.

It started small:

misplaced hours,

a name on my tongue

I couldn’t swallow.

And I—

I began to fade

from the inside out.

My name still fit my face,

but I was a ghost

wearing it like a borrowed coat.

Sleeves too long,

buttons missing.

They say I was alive,

but I remember nothing

except the feeling of being

written over.

I told my mother

I couldn’t stay.

She held her breath

like it was the only thing

keeping us both alive.

Now I grieve the birthdays

I don’t remember.

The spring that came

but didn’t thaw me.

I grieve the girl

who lived entirely in fear.

And still,

somehow,

I am here.

A little softer.

A little haunted.

But here.

With grief as the glue,

and breath I had to earn.

Learning how to live

inside a mind

that once let me go.

And I write this now

with a steady hand.

And maybe that means something.

BUBBLE GUM

Every morning

I count the days of the week

in tiny colors.

A soft clatter in the plastic box.

Each capsule a small planet,

orbiting the gravity of my will.

Pink for morning,

white for night.

I line them up like beads.

A rosary for survival.

They are prayers

I don’t always believe in

but pray anyway.

Seven little sanctuaries

for the parts of me

that forgot I’m still here.

I sort them,

one by one

and for a moment I am a child

picking pebbles

at the beach.

I hold them the same way,

turning them in my palm,

searching for meaning in the shapes.

I am seven

and I swallowed my bubble gum.

Will it stay in me forever?

cling to my ribs

and turn me pink from the inside out?

I wonder,

if they will root in me

like a watermelon seed?

Whole gardens will flourish

in my belly.

I swallow

because staying is an act of trust.

A whisper from the part of me

that still wants to live.

And I wonder

if the fear

is just proof

that I still want to be here

MORE THAN THIS ROOM

The chairs are orange.

Bright as peeled fruit.

We sit like seeds.

Some cracked,

all waiting to sprout.

A man talks about God.

His hands flutter like butterflies

trying to escape his sleeves.

prescriptions float down the sink,

swimming away as minnows.

Small fleets of freedom

Heading for the sea.

At night a man comes in

with seashells.

I press my ear to them

and hear the ocean.

They whisper:

there is more to you

than this room.

I kiss my wrists goodnight

as if they were children too restless to sleep.

I tuck them into the pillows.

I tell them, hush, hush,

the storm will pass.

I lay in the narrow bed,

curl beneath my blanket,

a cocoon stitched from hospital thread,

dreaming I will wake

with wings.