Killing My Twenties...

by Staceyann Chin


I spent the greater part of my twenties
fighting the urge to kill myself

dodging sharp moments I wanted to unlive

scraped me/elbows knees
on the floor/whore to my desires

victim to the whims of women who would wish me dead
or buried under things I would never outlive

having had my fill of that bloody decade

I willingly
left those loaded years behind
dragged my body forward

and settled
into these days drunk on purple flashes
small lights blinking pretty in code

the messages come through clearer
draped across my open skies

my highs are colored/girls
exploding

pixie dust/a woman I adore calls it
pixie dust

I am grateful for my thirties engulfing me
less brutal

from here
the voices seem softer

mouthing warm advice against my ear
move slow/baby

even slower
than
that

press those molasses-soaked dreams
into your skin

pin them
to what you already know to be true

invest a little time
a little money

even some flesh would be worth setting aside

sealing something in
makes it permanent

but no one can promise you any ending

not even you can promise
your own frail future a fixed outcome

don't lock yourself into a room with no door
come out of there
child

climb through the slit that only you can see

hope is only the irony of a southern woman
pitched headlong against
the first Black man to cause waves in the Big Whitehouse

the right house just hasn't been visible to any of us
from the beginning of the trade

raid the flowers
pity the petals
falling red upon a hard path

wrath and rivers
reeling window and change

fret not thyself

the years will pass
and time will once again
be your friend

your body will mend itself
hearts/hands/heads will roll into whole

and the bells tolling tender will announce your end
as you have known it

but this is only the end of a road we can see

see

everything depends on the choices you make
or avoid making

waking up doesn't have to be jolting
bolting is not always the best option

so stay
baby/girl stay
and fight

write your battles down in song
we've all been wrong at one point or the next

see the story in the text you have already written

twenties
thirties

no matter the mixed messages from the media
each milestone marks you

melts you
gold bits/stained with copper wires
all of them holding you/soldered

stuck to itself

water is no rock/no wind/no paper doll
no/rag/no/blood/no/bone

water is sometimes
just water

so drink
and be merry

these years you have will do what they have done to all of us

your job is to survive them
moment by moment

keep breathing, little one
go on sucking up that air

for somewhere down the line
and usually it ain't that far away

the tide will swing itself/turning what we long for

to splintered dust
pixies pointing forward/peeling back the parts/set
in stone/in gold

nothing will remain

rain and water
thunder and light

night is nothing in the face of such tectonic shifting

and if and when it happens to you
all one should do

is let go


(Staceyann Chin posted the above brilliance on the internet. I love it.)