so many unfinished shards of wisdom + lay between my fourth and fifth rib + paradox of grieving summer, + how it’s lost and broken all at the same time, and + how i think maybe this will fix it, + scribbled lines sentences smearing black ink + leave my hands tinged in pen + and how my soul is just as lost as it was before. 

the greatest contradiction, + the way i leave poems unfinished + because i think it will finish + complete the uncompleted + left inside my abdomen, wrangled hearts and souls of whatever it is i capture, + that nameless thing, + that feeling that makes sense because it doesn’t + 

whatever this poem is written about. 

i don’t know what to call it, all i know is + it leaves my hands a little empty + my ribs a little taller. 

it surrounds my spine + with ugly black matter, + sort of space-filler + i think might fix me + make me a little bit less wasted space, + a little bit more whole. 

i cannot tell if i feel this feeling or if this feeling feels me + as if i am a vessel, i am a holder for this thing to inhabit + so it can wrangle importance + into paper. 

i am unable to compartmentalize, i cannot separate this feeling from all other feelings + so it sits in the bottom of my torso until i vomit it all out + into a hideous stack in front of me + words on words on words, + until it lands on simple pieces of paper, + until they are mine. 

there is not a moment in my life + when i have not felt this, + this horrid, heinous hunger, + this need to feel + this yearning that freezes my limbs and burns out my eyes + my body carries it in my knees, my breastbone, in the spaces of my ribcage + and as i inhabit the ground and whisper to the trees, i tell them 

i am no longer human 

i am a hurricane + a spirit + i am everything this world holds + i am everything i write, i write about everything. 

i am wafting trees + and melted paper + and dead stars + and locked medicine cabinets + and carved tracheas + and empty ghosts + and glass throats + 

i am all of those things. i am sure of it. 

i am poetry. 

(but what if i am wrong? 

what if i am just a girl?)