santos scribes

‘you have a way with words’
i heard her say once,
in earnest

but all the words i ever spoke back then were all the words i knew she’d want to hear
so really it was the words who were having their way
with
me

through trial
and mostly error,
i have discerned most people would rather not
look at
or
listen to
a grown woman chart and bellow the sounds & scapes of the
missing cords in her
heartless
heart
songs

it
becomes
shameful
somehow
the older she gets

like watching an elderly man shop for dented cans and bruised fruit
in the back corner of an empty grocery store

but it was the grocery store, with its poise and promise, who first called out to me
as i watched from the parking lot of my foster mother’s hand,
my feeble father dig through the trash can there

it was the storefront of that moment
and all the air that encased it
that seemed to softly whisper,

‘you are not most people’

write the songs,
in your melancholy minor
it’s the only thing that will ever slow the bleeding.
.
.