Somewhere, in an unborn world, we wouldn't wake up 

to the only-silent reflection of a lonely sky 

a face of borrowed dreams and spilled hallucinations, forgetting us, forgotten.

I watch the orange smudge of the horizon—a papercut of dusk, 

searching for hope, longing for the grief’s quiet, yearning for the aftermath silence.

But when the gunshots pluck away our muteness, 

bone by bone, like the fish bones I used to spit, 

we flee, feet flying like the exiled birds. 

What else to do, have to do, can we do? -when the unspeakable lunges at us—

as a broken chalk outline of a body?

Truly, I envy my past selves, those who can only dream 

of an ashened city, every street shrieking with cinder flames,

and the corpses slammed, rammed, and hammered to the ground, 

our throats blazed with the soreness of screeching—

no, just a statistic of each alienation and genocide, nearing world peace

The nights where we could walk freely across the breathless dirt

before, where I granted pearly sweat the right to cool and dribble down my face

the truth is I can barely envision it anymore, the truth is, i don’t remember what any of this feels like, the truth is, it seems there's only thoughts left

like words hung in a crimson throat, struggling, but unmoving, lips flaming frost on a window,

but i try to imagine it as fairy-tale perfect, a foggy window brushed aside, a once

 upon a time that i once clutched, a suspended 

   lost memory.

lost.

Still, 

the scars sketched on our flesh, the black wounds charcoaled upon my skin-

At least I think, 

Those stories reside, whether the fruits of pride, or pain. I tell you, as long as we breathe and crack whispers into the silence among ourselves. I tell you, as long as someone is there to cup our murmurs into their ears, listening. I tell you, even if just us. 

We will not be forgotten.