“I want to throw a party for the heartbreak

that turned you into a poet.” - Mindy Nettifee

 

I am a shapeshifter, shadows of previous lives

gathered in a singular place and haunched

under street lamps as the dark drags the day

back into the light. Thrust forward, it comes slowly,

the sky iridescent in its struggle, and yet:

I am in awe, urging. I am saddened by my lacking

as though my body was formed with an open blade,

imperfect. The silhouettes retreat and I stand naked

in the brilliance of noon. I’ve habitually written words

through heartbreak, a practiced effort of placing language

before thought and thought before feeling, but

I became a poet when my lives broke apart - scattered

like confetti in a breeze, leaving behind this one life:

broken, but here, nevertheless. I am a note of history,

the source of which has become a bouquet of lives,

though I grieve for what I have yet to lose.

Shadows trail as I walk back into the night,

arriving as it has with the same struggle as the day,

overturning itself like finger-paintings hung to dry.

My words are the same, dripping from my lips: a rouge

of becoming - risen in sensitivity, settled by savagery.