Feeling Like

Poetry by Kit Painter

I.

I feel so empty i think I’ve forgotten

how to be alive.

I exist only in the dried blood

welling in cracked lips.

to exist is to be consumed

by nothingness

to grasp at intangible light and watch

it dim behind your palm

to return empty-handed again and again

to taste the blood on your lips and hope

you can live again.

II.

I feel so much I think I might die.

to feel is to be consumed

to bleed profusely in vibrant colors

onto the canvas of imagination

painting a million fragile dreams

to be tucked in the corner of a girl’s smile

in the trace of her fingertips

in the back of a bird’s wings

in the creases in a freshly bloomed flower

in the space between constellations

in the child’s innocent laughter and the grandmother’s well-worn wisdom.

I am a girl and I am a bird.

I am a blooming flower fed by dirt

and the decay of that which did not serve me. I am stardust and innocence

and the amalgamation of all the ancestors who loved before me,

and like them I love

and love

and love

and love

and I ache too

because I feel and feel everything

and to feel is to be alive

and holy **** I am so alive

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Kit Painter is a budding poet and fiction writer currently balancing creativity with college homework. If she’s not in class or writing, you can probably find her being whimsical in your local forest or trinket shop.