Faith Like a Phoenix
Sometimes I just feel picture-perfect
like flowers that stay blue
even if they can't reflect the ocean.
and I want to serenade the firmament
and resound myself to the air with silence like growing,
and sink tendrils, feasting off the sun in whisper-spirals of
photosynthesis and simple love like
eyelash to eyelash.
When you're small, spinning
around in circles feels like magic, with
wind webbing your fingers and flowers in your hair,
wild as anarchy over your unfurled shoulder-blades.
Tears don't always mean sadness
when you find them on your nose and realize it's
storm-song brushing your soul.
This time I was running under cathedral-clouds
draped in sistine light on the edges, and curling.
Sorrow and love are always spat through each other,
until they spark, flinting through my waterlogged eyes.
I just saw myself in a mirror and turned it inside-out
and around to escape me.
Does ugly under rain become beautiful?
What I see in puddles doesn't hurt me,
but I still like to shatter them, see-through
pottery running on my legs and then I slip
until my jeans are soaked with everything but blood.
I am anything but simple.
Rain is anything but cleansing.
Faith is anywhere but here, where I need it most.
I lift my chin and sing to the sky that offers no
release and no recompense, hoarse
and battered, and interrupted as I am by the weather.
Because sometimes
picture-perfect doesn't fit me. Sometimes
drenched hoodies, sodden denim, pale
melancholy faces up-turned and
chains around my ankles rising
from the star-spattered dust like a phoenix
define my existence.
Copyright © Hana Ryusaka | Year Posted 2009
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