six feet

We are six seconds from breaking.

We are six too many holes in our ribcages,

carved like six-foot-deep pieces of Earth, shuddering as we lay our sorrows in her.

We are six-times-four hours that matter

when the world changes color and we change color.

But we are six lightyears past caring about the hour of the day

or who or why or when

because we're six feet above tragedy

and burying it doesn't hide the burn marks.

It only sets us on fire.

Everyone's hearts beat a little louder today.

Twelve hundred drums pace the hallways

but its pulsing beat is missing a few ticks and tocks.

We are six songs that muffle the pain,

with the volume on loud

and our thoughts on loud

and we're

six steps from hitting the floor with prayers that cut our tongues in half.

We are six ideas that never seemed to stop the bleeding,

and an epidemic that's biting down on our lungs

and coaxing our friends to fall

six feet under.

We are six holes in our chests,

making room for breathless bodies when they could've breathed in ours.

You could've breathed in ours.

"Fix this, fix this, fix this."

But we're six feet from making any sense at all.

You watch their chairs empty

while sympathy sprays the walls.

You listen to teachers cry,

carrying speeches and sad lyrics in your back pockets.

"There's too many tragedies within those walls,"

but those aren't the walls that wrote the tragedies.

Those walls did.

Those heart-rib-walls.

That stone cold structure keeping their sorrows in

and their veins out.

It's the wall around his brainstem,

the devil on her wrists.

The bad bricks piling up along his spine.

"Fix this."

Our "why's" muddle the ground and get lost five feet down.

They can't hear us six feet below.

But we can hear them.

Oh,

we can hear

them.