i have words wrought in fear, dying to come out
but they’re misplaced among layers of worries like the layers of earth,
the crust of tectonic plates crashing into heat,
fragmenting into dust as i speak
i have words that echo louder than my dreams
but they break apart as half-broken sentences and nothing but ruins,
churned into leftover pieces of dirt and gravel
as my earth within shakes and crumbles
these aren’t just words i wish to speak
this is me
piecing together
twenty
years of what i’ve seen:
the robbing of words
robbing me
of me