kindred in manhattan

I promised a mantra of

Accepting what’s defeated,

Learning to be true when the lens is 

But a haze of altruistic rose.

So I’ll take the beating;

Stand for the feeble and forsaken,

A story I can only tell because I’ve risen

And I’ve felt you finally come home

But, in the beginning,

It made me sick and her colors on your lips

Were evanescing all the progress that we held.

I’d fallen into an intuitive illness.

My skin, abrasive against the grass,

Left red shed upon the soil.

A woman whose dignity had been pillaged to

Flesh and bone and utter vengeance

Hissed drunken pain into the phone,

Until her spirit dwindled.

And slowly, with your hand lifting my chin,

And your effortless stride towards redemption,

I prayed that what burns can muster restitution.

In the mean time, my ribs were too small

for my lungs in the days you were gone.

I was pining for travel, but in a harrowing chasm,

You’re given no choice but to mourn.

So I rested. Inhabited the places I once hadn’t

Until I learned that my healing wasn’t only mine—

It was ours.

And then came the believing.

Living kindred in Manhattan on Halloween weekend,

I watched your arm build stone as it swept atop my shoulders,

I saw your shape against the view of the city

And as you gazed at me, the silhouette deepened.

The return home to your skin was a single flame’s crackle 

In a dim room only housing two bodies, a hearth,

The risks that we took, and the warmth which it earned.

And I knew then that I’d thank you in the end.

- M. Rose