I OPENED UP TO SCREAM

In Truth

Camille Rankine

I thought there was a truth

we could agree on: what is

loss, what is calamity.

I bowed my head before a storm

of our own making.

When I looked up, I had folded

all the world into these words.

It was night in a dense forest.

My country turned its back to me.

I opened up to scream, the storm’s wind

rushed in and in the dark, I coughed up

someone else’s grief.

In truth, I thought what if

I made myself so small I never hurt

again. Not me or someone else.

A point so dense and hot with light enough

to animate this armor.

Is this how stars are made or how

they are destroyed? In truth,

I had hope. It softened me

for slaughter. Softened me so bad

I can’t find the end of me

for where my enemy begins.

Am I lost? Or just

calamity. I set my back

against the wind. In the dark,

a single star. I see the forest

for the forest, for the trees.