“On your worst days,
pay attention to the tiny green cracks on your wrist
and remind your bones to breathe dust in.
Count every inhale and exhale like lost souls
finding benches inside your cobwebbed lungs and settling—
all crumpled papers and too-stained napkins
washed away from your pale cloud cheeks and burning
away into nothingness.
How every second is surviving,
mist passing through rocks and cracks as though
little by little your skin is rain and softness
unimagined.
Every heartbeat is a sounding fire alarm.
Every crackle in your throat is a lost static finding
a voice that says, you are worth every record played,
beat after beat even without asking.
Spend moments when you stop
sending empty letters to space and whitewash ceilings.
Darling, you drown when you drown, I know
but never stop breathing.”