Life Preservers

By Rodrick Reid Jr.

Voice like a firing pin
Spoke in explosions

Had ridges for ribs

That dropped off into empty chest
As if an excavation crew was hired to dig up
and remove the parts of you that let you Feel
Voice like a firing pin
Spoke in explosions

ou made boys and girls pray underneath

their beds
Each already deepened chest became an abyss
Your breath turned into squalls
And then one day the world Changed
Voice like a firing pin
Spoke in explosions

You learned to knit pain into a

Kind of

camouflage

Treated hope like a mirage

As if you could taste what we feel
Made meals of our hope you took darkness as an invite
You talked strangers into death and laughed
You hem yourself into the open scar
Voice like a firing pin
Spoke in explosions
You crept into our lives
Stabbing your words into our skin
And mothers who secured the floors
Underneath beds all shook their heads
Gracefully dipping misery

WE TURNED ARE SELVES INTO LIFE PRESERVERS