and, like
that, my hopes
are dashed

and crumpled
like the body of
the bee at
the bottom of
the stairwell:

god, i wanted
light but i was
blind without the
glimmer of my own two
wings and so i
flung myself against the
glass over and over and
over starving for the sunlight
craving all the courage sky
could give me searching
for an out but i

fell thirty feet
instead and died
like a martyr, like
a metaphor

so when they peer down
at me from the second
stair and scoop up
my broken being with aching
gentility let them remember: i

never hurt
a thing