lifted from soil

I don’t know how to save you.
not in so few nor so many variations of pallid
 
skin; the way it knotted around your cheeks,
and you were cold, as if playing in the autumn breeze too long.
but this is all as it should be, or could be,
if you only stopped playing dead.
 
I think, maybe it’s good to not be okay.
not in the way that suffices the paper without it’s pen
but by the way the pen never quite knows what to write,
and you’re too tired of semantics; too strained from ink-stained fingers
pressing black spots on your blue lips.
 
sometimes I wonder if you knew
that someone felt you in their breastbone, thumbing stanzas and
crossing words - scratching dark lines in their arteries.
they couldn’t breathe, and you couldn’t breathe,
and air felt cold for lack of a better use.
 
but you were always there,
starving for a better phrase than death.