Broken Hallelujah


got words? 0 comments

You asked me
to bandage my wrists
with your lips,
stitching kisses across scar tissue
and drying tears that spilled from eyes
split open like wounds
that never healed.

You found me broken.
A fractured bird
clinging to branches
of a tree grown gnarled and withered,
acrophobic tendencies
fighting the natural propensity
to hurl myself into flight.

You tattooed your calm
across my trembling skin,
answering vertigo with stability.
And I flew for you.
Fashioned makeshift wings
from the folded paper of your words
stapled to my broken back,
soaring upon your exhalations
towards the clouds that became our kingdom.

Never one for religion,
but we impersonated angels.
I found divinity in your eyes,
tracing your jaw’s outline
into a psalm sung in reverence.
The Balm of Gilead found in the palm
of your cupped hand when it rested
upon my cheek,
filling yourself up
with my offerings until I had given
all that remained.

How quickly you changed.
As if your back was not strong enough
to bear the weight of all
I had carried.
Rearranged the times,
flipped me on my head
to leave sands building mountains
upon our oasis.
Desert in my mouth,
I choked on insecurities
that sifted to the surface.

Kingdom undone,
you asked me to fly
and then snatched back the wind
that left you breathless.
For the truth is,
there was no strength in walls
built from paper mache wings
and wounds stitched together
by strings
only strong enough
to hang myself.


"Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah"





ATOM 0.3