The Upping Hand

... if time were acrobatic, I'd have used the centuries-leap technique, too...

Chorus 2x:
Color me behind a rib
And watch me contrast
But pull the hair away from my face
And notice our common eye color

It's a rope's end in both directions
And sometimes it's hard to choose which tug escapes the mud
And these footprints have piled up all the while you've floated ahead
I've given up on the shoe-size excuse
But can finally wrap my fingers around the sole rests upon my palms-
And, no, my life's lives weren't carved about as crops

It's the inked-up wall
That papercut the halves unevenly
And can still be smeared with the same human hands

We were all born bare-foot
And thought to live in the closet-space our neighbors shared-
But the trapdoors have always been there for the making manual and the octave options

I'm still trying to calculate how to roam about freely-
Dodging the weightless documents and their comfortable-stepping words

I divorce the under-hand
And can still exchange my love the same
If I'm to be a half, then let me be that way...

Chorus 2x:
Color me behind a rib
And watch me contrast
But pull the hair away from my face
And notice our common eye color

I couldn't find a pen for this
So I scratched it in with my thumbnail
And pressed hard enough in hopes to indent the following pages

I wasn't built by weaker hands
And the curves don't mark a carving-away-from-
They're just directions toward a freshness

-a lifting head right through the roof
And the sketchings of a new floor plan
(so that the paths reset themselves)
And then... a living-space division by:
The body not its science-

Color me behind a rib
And watch me contrast
But pull the hair away from my face
And notice our common eye color

I know the comfort of the under-lid air
But think it's best to break through, and notice:
The formula behind the range of handwidth stains

I simply can't stand
Beneath
The line
But had to wrap around it once
My single attempt to palm-collect
And tie together the birth of every breath

Until my voice acts as a firework
And all its burstings match...