Firstborn (Ya'aburnee)

Glass clouds shed their autumn skin
Kiss the mourning stems as they bow to the wind
Heads hung like wartime mothers
As the congregants struggle to console one another
We're bandaged together, soothing the surcease
Huddled inside the fog beneath the barren trees
Budding youth, unfettered by absolutes
Do branches wither first when there's blood on the roots?

Can you stretch a moment into a thousand?
Away from the quiet collapse of it all
I know the know who knows you, I see the see who sees you
I'll follow you into forever

I memorized your pain
I put my thoughts inside your name
Little light, can't you see?
You're supposed to be the one who buried me
I tried to stop the flood, I tried to pull you from the tide
Now you paint the sky with distant fire

The room lay quiet, sowing silence
Watching lifelines stream through wilting arteries
Dreams crash with awe behind your roving eyes
How I envy the calm that occupies your mind
Drifting just above the flatline
That keeps your thoughts displaced from mine
I can't divert the current
I divide and wash ashore

I'll try to write you to rest
Plant you inside my prose
Yet my resolve
Does it shake beneath a four-foot casket shadow?
The ink has spilled across the page
Shaping surviving sun to shade
Valleys and peaks, in grief
Descent into a ceaseless sleep

See how the night unfolds
Constellations welcome you home
Adrift in the river beyond our memories
You bury me

I memorized your pain
I put my thoughts inside your name
Little light, can't you see?
You're supposed to be the one who buried me
I tried to stop the flood, I tried to pull you from the tide
Now you paint the sky with distant fire
I memorized your pain
I put my thoughts inside your name
Little light, can't you see?
You're supposed to be the one who buried me
I tried to stop the flood, I tried to pull you from the tide
Now you paint the sky with distant fire