This poem is about the different coping mechanisms we use to keep ourselves together.
Every story has a beginning, middle, and end.
Every church has brick, mortar, and the stain glass windows.
Brick.
And mortar.
Keep it together.
Every notebook turned holy.
Every poem turned prayer.
And how many of us were just wingless birds waiting for a chance to touch the sky?
Every love song ever written becoming the wind beneath these wax wings, becoming songs for flight, I guess now I know why the caged blackbird sings.
Billie.
And Nina.
And hums Coltrane too; I guess I fall in love too easy.
And everything that makes me feel alive can kill me, so I’ve never really been afraid of death, just what comes after.
I am falling into the ocean of my own regrets.
How many of us smelled the wax burning, flesh burning and ignored all of the warning signs because the masochist filter doesn’t fit the picture and there’s no pretty way to phrase a call for help.
How does it look when a burning bush calls the fire department and the matches are at its feet?
How many of us are just poor unfortunate souls martyred into the sainthood of a stained glass window, telling ourselves that wax against skin, or glass against skin,
or skin against skin is catharsis.
And it is.
