Stay Safe Today
(for K Love Y)
Stay safe today.
Write a poem.
Lock it somewhere,
your mother can’t invade
a place that your man can’t degrade.
Tie it to a pink ballon
and send it West
slip it into a brown
pint bottle vacant glass envelope
after someone’s bourbon-laced escape.
Screw the cap on tight
the way you are screwed
every time he hits you.
Throw your poem fully born into the oceans
Watch it float away or fly off to a lost town.
Give it voice life and passage.
Poems that live stealth inside of you
erase when he holds the gun next to your head
when he clicks the bullet into the chamber
when he says that he might and and that he can
someday he will.
You say your story out loud to me
like a woman already dead.
Keep yourself safe today. Breathe life into your own mouth
Press in on your ribs to keep your heart beating.
Everyday stay safe and seek a rare and able thought.
The one that says I don’t want to lock up my poems
Or my magic...
my life has worth. My life has worth.
Let the world hear from you instead of
about you. Find your backbone girl
now that you understand
what it is to have it broken.
Live yourself back to life.
The idea of you needs your body
to look up so that you can see a
worthy idea the one that waits above.
Invite it home.
©2019 annie fahy
