M. Hank

your features don’t contort when you cry.

tears skate down your face until they get caught

on the side of your nose 

or  the tip of your chin

I would never admit it, but

I’m broken. I have lived through a hell you only see in your nightmares. I was born into a world of agony and have stayed silent on the darkest of nights.

Just some little sentences, quick delights, really, jotted down on a tiny reporter's notebook during a flight from Burlington to Raleigh yesterday. Enjoy and remember that the world is full of delight!

I don’t know if we’ll ever be whole. Not that we ever were in the past. It has struck me, though, recently, that, while we, or at least I, frequently discuss, and, indeed, logically understand that our rights are not our own an

I am eleven years old. I think freedom isn't what they say it is. 

I live in the land of the free. I am free 

in most ways. 

I can be a black belt. 

I can be a published poet.