Trip.

 

I trip over a step.
I was sixteen years old when I first heard
A whisper buried in brickwork,
A name unspoken, a love unnamed,
Tucked between verses of cautionary tales,
Bound in leather, nailed to the walls
Of a world that did not want to know.

 

"Not now, not you, not like this."

 

But I was here.
And I had learned the way of silence.
How to walk in twilight, how to shrink,
How to carve my name on hidden walls
That led to places where, for a moment,
We were more than shadows
And less than ghosts.

 

Trip.

 

The air in rooms smelled of quiet rebellion,
Of candle light, of the drenched pavement,
Of the city’s soul exhaled in neon hues
Laughter, hushed but noble
Hands clasped, fleeting but firm
A spark that dared to rise,
Before falling into alleys where the streetlights
Never met our eyes

 

Trip.

 

I was twenty years old when I saw them fall.
A boy with violets in his hands,
A man who kissed the sky as he leapt
Names were erased before they were ever learned
I gathered their echoes,
Wove them into my bones,
Let them rise in my breath

 

Trip.

 

They built this city on our absence,
Raised spires over our unmarked graves,
Sang hallelujahs in the hollow of our silence
But I have lived in the margins long enough
To know that ink bleeds,
That words endure,
That we rise even as we fall

 

Trip.

 

Not today
Not like this.