Had Years

"There is a reason my body creaks like a closing casket

every time I fuck with the lights left on

It is the same reason my friend

sets fire to photographs of birds

and follows the smoke with pleading eyes.

We’ve both had years when the Phoenix didn’t rise,

When we slept in beds of cindered feathers

and held hollow ashen beaks the way the other kids hold ice cream cones.

I sucked the bones of a songbird’s rotting wings

and you think your pills are going to fix me, doctor?

You think I’m going to chase this down with water?

And my silence equaled every Christmas morning we were still happy and grateful.

if I could face the eye of your storm in the warning

locked in my voice box that never came

Would I tell you all of this and after that

Would I find the nerve to admit that even if I could I wouldn’t take my silence back?"