Sometimes I feel like a drunken giant walking with the legs of a mosquito

Sometimes I feel like an ocean poured into a cup with holes,

Sometimes I feel like a hurricane buttoned inside a shirt.

I have worn my name like wet cement. I have carried silence like a sack of broken clocks. I have smiled with a graveyard behind my lips.

There are days when breathing feels like drawing water from a dry well.

I have known the low key places where pockets grow cobwebs, where hunger sharpens its knife on the ribs, where night sits on the chest like unpaid rent, where hope is a candle arguing with the wind.

I have stood there. I have shaken there. I have nearly called my wounds my real name. I have nearly crowned despair and let it rule me.

But ashes are only dust with a memory of fire.

The seed goes underground not to die but to negotiate with rain.

Iron enters flame as an ordinary metal and leaves speaking the language of swords.

The moon loses itself monthly and still return without apology.

So I picked my voice from the teeth of silence. Threaded courage through the needle of pain. Turned scars into maps with landmarks.

What tried to bury me mistook me for a coffin, not knowing I was a seed with fists.

What tried to break me only introduced me to the strength inside my ribs.

Now when I walk, the ground checks its posture.

Now when I speak, fear folds its chair and leaves.

Now when I rise, the dark searches itself for somewhere to hide.

I was never a drunken giant.

I’m a mountain learning how to move.

I'm a lightning studying patience.

I'm thunder learning balance.