My mother once told me that hearts open only when broken,

And that truest courage is born from a coward’s battle cry.

I did not recognise blood when my father’s lips ran like war, all

Because my mother spoke in stuttering pinks and lullaby blues.

Now these walls pray at night with their palms bent skywards,

In hopes that the empty sky does not forgive as easily as us.

He believed that difficult times birth heroes but tragedy lives in all of us.

Much like this city of dust, the sun hides everything that is broken

Until the wolves grow quiet and search for our moon, edging skywards

Like skyscrapers scraping the floor of heaven. In silence, we’ll cry.

In wonder, she’ll die. With dirt in her teeth. And I’ll remember her river-red blues

And the lullaby hues that bent light to shine a different holiness upon us all.

But when his fist left craters in our sky, stars became blind and we died for all

The heroes who did not worship the same gods. Eyes shut to prayer, to us

It was a different kind of worship—one that burned above in sunset blues.

Though we saw the same sky, we found a different truth, bent to look broken.

Her loss did not belong to us, but we grieved as though it was. We had to cry

Because it was easier to let rain fall than to ask our hope to climb skywards.

And when the river floods his banks, we’ll bend our crooked palms skywards,

Begging for forgiveness though we have not sinned. Clouds hover over all

Who dare to walk this cemetery, but books have been burned to make heroes cry

To emptier skies. We will not stop her rain. Black roses shall bloom between us

Like funeral goers and her echo will summon a dawn that has been split and broken

Since our oceans could never reflect the blood in her eyes. Only his perfect, pale blue.

His burn does not show on our skin. But it is felt by her. His sky is still a perfect blue

But when the sun dips, blood will fall like stars. “Tilt your clasped palms skywards.”

She did not ask for more sunlight, just a little less darkness for she did not come broken.

A new moon will arc overhead and wolves will teach our hero that endurance is all

She’ll ever need to survive the night. A broken ribcage does not always lead us

To a broken heart. We may fall like the mighty but this is not the same. I still cry

For a better morning because she has no stomach to swallow his sky. Let me cry

For the other mothers who did not come home from a long night of lullaby blues.

When they hit the pavement did they keep falling because gravity summons us

To our graves? Do you wonder why she begged us to bend our palms skywards?

It was so that we would not feel his burn below. His morning light blinds all.

But her truth is different. He should have known not to fix what was never broken.

Now that his gravity has collapsed, she will seek a new moon, falling skywards.

It’s a different type of falling but we’ll sleep so she can raise a better morning in us all.

And if stars must die to stay alive then maybe her sky was never the only one broken.