PAPERWAIT

My flesh is paper void of weight
With scribbled lines, so hard to read
Trapped inside this altered state
Where I am judged by how I bleed

A mindset so much less than white
With yellowed years of life’s neglect
Where sun-stained days are draped with night
And words are people I reject

These lives I’ve lost now lines I’ve found
Dividing muscle from my skin
They split perceptions by the pound
To keep dark feelings locked within

Now floating high above my head
Looking down to what’s not there
Bookmarks resting in my bed
Pages draped on kitchen chairs

And so you write across my face
Reverse the words so they make sense
Reflected in a pool of sorrow
Chapters for the loss I borrow

For what you do is how you’re known
Actions outweigh clever lines
Walking through this world alone
Storms inside your crowded mind

For words are food for hungry lies
As questions fall on ears, quite deaf
And silence spawns the poets muse
With futures filled with dark regrets

Of time and tides and tears, we cry
Of love and loss to circumvent
Of vain confessions on the fly
Of other lives that we invent

My flesh is paper void of ink
Come closer, and you’ll clearly see
That what we feel is how we think
And love’s the ultimate mystery

TM DiSarro