My mouth tingles with the taste of cloves
A bittersweetness trickles down my throat
My arms reach out to the extensive shore
Begging for all that I will never endure
I watch as Tantalus thirsts for his elixir
Knowing that I am unable to fix him
And as my throat parches like hills of sand
I rush to embrace the grains of man
First I touch a mother of fragile glass
Who gave birth to a child of powdered ash
And so she washes her hands with tears
As I attempt to annul her fears
Then I walk the footsteps of a weeded girl
Who lives amidst her parents' flowered world
And every time her roots become undone
She is thrust in the shade and withers away from the sun
Alas I speak to the earthen skin
The womb of the woman who took me in
I sift her soil through my chocolate fingers
But the scent of violence still lingers
Next I sing to the dandelion-haired boy
Whose life was bereft of the hummingbird's sweet joy
I rise to carry the mountains that crush his bones
Willing my heart to a mind of stone
Still, I embrace the children lost
To this world’s endless holocaust
Reaching across oceans far and wide
And casting each tidal wave gracefully aside
In the end I perish in my grave
Depleted of love with no legacy to my name
Because in trying to lift every grain of sand
I played the part of a God in the body of a man
Spilled Ink 