“

This is a poem about sharp things
like knives and words and your
hands when you’re sitting across
the table from me asking me 
to please just tell you what’s wrong.

I am too sad to say. The words
get stuck in my throat, my insides 
devouring each lilting syllable 
and by the time they reach 
my mouth there is nothing left.

You burn every house in me
but the poet’s, raze them to 
the ground and salt them so
they’ll never grow back.
Only the writer still stands.

The writer, with her trembling 
heartbeat, her trembling hands, 
language living in her lungs that never 
quite makes it out except for 
when she turns it into ink.

This is a poem about sharp things 
like eyes and teeth and the poet
you leave standing while 
everything else burns. She still 
loves you, even after all of this.

”

—	THE HOUSE OF PINDAR - a. davida jane