actually asked
to be born.
Not the scorn
or the stress;
not the laughter
or the sex
(however respectively
uproarious and fabulous);
not to know hunger
or the comforting tug
of fabric on skin,
or the dizzy
oblivion after
spinning pirouettes.
All that we requested
was to know
how it felt
to draw breath just once
and to speak—
or, to wit:
to peek out
from these shells and
proclaim our strange dreams.
But in our vim
to strike a bargain,
it seems we forgot
to stipulate that anyone
should be there
to listen;
and little did we know
how often
we’d find the need
to keep on repeating
ourselves, over
and over again.
