Northern Lights Photographed From Space

i am laying flowers at the grave

of the man who killed me;

and there is nothing god could do

to stop me now.

Dirt road Polna droga

The Poet, Reynier Llanes, 2021

And the grass where you lay left a bed in your shape

Here’s a video so you can hear the water and the thrushes. I took it for you because you couldn’t be there. <3

the screaming that bounces around the inside of my skull is back to grace me with its presence. guttural and keening and feral.

i take another sip from my soda can and pretend i do not hear it, because to let it out into the world, where it would transform from visceral agony to banal noise, would be worse than enduring it silently. at least this way i can still feel it. at least this way no one else has to.

fireflies honestly make me cry a little. out of gratitude and wonder. thank goodness we live in a world with bioluminescence. thank goodness we live in a world where it can fly.

there are so many scars on my body, but i could not tell you where they came from. not because i do not want to, but because i do not know.

my lungs.

they are too small for my body.

they have not the mass to handle each shuddering breath, each desperate gasp that begs “please, please, let me express something”

my body.

it is too small for my feelings.

it snaps and groans and stretches to try to accommodate the maelstrom within my chest, to no avail, so the scream claws its way up my throat and out my mouth, hurling insult and injury towards anyone nearby.

and I stand in the aftermath,

in the rubble,

and wonder what I have become.

so hold me on the way down,

and do me no harm,

i cause myself enough injury

from day to day, love