Not Everything Broken Is Useless

I could see my exhales in the air. My roommate and I were told not to walk under the tracks at night. In the few days we have lived here we knew to look for the green spire, follow it home if we were lost. Lost is how we typically found ourselves. Drunk on the cold air shivering into our scarves. The dark places held warmth of anonymity, being ourselves in such hidden places.

There are no blinds in my window, just a sheer curtain. I can see out, so I imagine the passersby can see in as well. I doubt many people look up, so I haven’t been too concerned with it. There is nothing to see but a warm heart glowing inside the window. All I want to do is unscrew and hang every skeleton. Surely that’s something which could block the light. Showing yourself isn’t just for the hopeless. The scary parts of you create your spine just as much as your dreams. Few things will straighten the kinks like honesty. If you ask I will show you my veins. There is nothing left to fear, no ones insides are pretty.

There is a certain silence that comes with exposing yourself. Once it’s out and there is no coiling back. Some think it’s brave, but I think it’s mandatory. All we have is ourselves, and if we are lucky, a handful of the unconditional. Parents or friends, I am not worried about being burned. My fingers are typically cold so it will take me a moment to recoil from the fire. I will spread it with my hands, the magnificent smoke signal so you know I am willing to try. They say there is stardust inside us, burning the atoms speeding up collisions. We are all just chemical reactions, waking up each day to ignite the fire crawling up our throats.

Gravity gets the best of things, pulling expendable items to the ground. My finger bled on my cracked iPhone, it’s just another reminder of physics. Not everything broken is useless, I can accept the pieces in working order. It creates a pattern of the glass, not everything has to be pristine. The scraped up edges add character, no one leaves this earth whole. Our beings expanding into space, colliding into the atmosphere.

The search is in our DNA, our eyes do nothing but look up. We can see the moving parts and feel safe in between the spaces. The ambiguity in rules, nothing is black and white. There is a mixture of perception, upside down is the best way to solve word searches. A coworker showed me once, an act I hadn’t even considered. Your brain recognizes the patterns, the words bleeding out into your eyes. Cheating can sometimes be a matter of semantics. Not all searches have an ending, the bare bones and skin pulled back into your ribcage. A skinning of disaster and hope buried deep within the cells. A genetic code impossible to be extracted while the exhales allow atoms into the air.