The Shadow Worker's Hymn

To all the nights I bit my lip so hard it bled,

My chin stained red,

just to quiet the tears

In fear

that they might think I’m in imposter

Wasting my youth on fake sorrows that crossed her

Off the list, as another cheater,

a plagiarist

Thank you.

To all the the mirrors I broke

Tense words I spoke

That made their way into orbit, short-circuit, magnetic

My subconscious was to these pungent beliefs

That rotted my chattering teeth

Stole my youth from me with no penalty

Just so I could be skinny, fit down a chimney,

thinking that would make me a gift to the world,

A small girl whose assembly was user friendly.

Thank you.

To all the people who saw my heart as toy,

The bat boy, cowboy, decoy

you set up as child’s play

So I’d become wet clay,

weed in your airway, the flowers after de-cay

Something for you to mold as I molded

And wrinkle as you folded

And frozen as you bolted

Thank you.

To all the summers I spent shaking,

not from cold but from breaking,

Into powders for the baking

Of a household missing the yeast for the dough,

The heat for the stove,

The brisk allegro screeching from every blow,

To the costume of our souls,

Soles aching from carrying my family’s woes

In my backpack in the cubbyholes.

Thank you.

I thank this gradient of misery,

For teaching me

What it means to be human.

What it means to take on the plight

Of descending from light

Just to end up in shadows and tattered bed clothes,

In hopes that I can compose a string of words that juxtapose

The feeling of darkness.

Colorful prayers and archangel players,

and bright musical chairs with heirs of the air(pause) signs,

giddy from realization that with shadows, their must be luminosity,

curiosity of the glow that emanates from palmistry,

The gleam of astrology, mythology,

The ideology that our souls had autonomy to

chose this biology that rises with the trees and sets with the soil,

To ascend our spirit into higher consciousness, cognizance bottomless,

Our purpose, monogamous, wed to our auras with confidence,

That we will find her in this dimension.

But first we must drag these bones through

the dusk and the night

So that one day our essence might

Find the shred of light

To cling onto as a birthright,

Until the twilight brings

The morning sunlight.