Words For You

Perhaps there are words for you and words for me
just as certain as the sun knows where to shine and where not to 
And in the nakedness of the human machine
a contradiction of life and vulnerability
we make our place by past not fate
the noise of souls howling words around a fire 
so that those words clump like clay in poems and into meaning
Vulnerable shaves down to bones of what we are
past shaves down to bones of what they were
And as much as we claim a singularity
as a planet with things that cry and feel and breathe and speak 
unprecedented among the others 
we are still a planet, still connected to past like a mother
with an umbilical cord of stars we cannot remember 
For the knowledge of past is present therefore past is still present 
as long as we know of what it was, it still is 
Books can be burned, but the feeling of words cannot 
so perhaps there were groves of meanings meant for you
and another garden of them for me
for a rose is a rose but it is still a flower. 

-anna sluder

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