Dragonhearts

by Nikita Gill

Understand our treacherous impulses and act against them, continuously.

as you smile, unbothered, let them know how much better off you are without their venom coursing through your veins.

Even the air tastes sweeter because you’re no longer breathing through their poisonous fumes.

Even in the Underworld, the air suddenly honeyed, made his reign feel so much kinder, better than it ever was before.

Don’t let it hold you down. Remember how viciously you lived when you were untouched.

before you decide it’s time to put on your armor & draw your blade, remember your limitations.

more going easy on yourself; more believing that impossibly wonderful things can & will happen to you.

They all simply told me that I couldn’t gleam like you and I just said, so dare me.”

do it on purpose.

make them regret telling you what you can & cannot have.

The day I stopped naming this body cage and a thing that no one could ever love, the darkness learned to fear me and flee so I could finally dip my body in the honeylight glow of my own soft, warm, gentle love.

I weigh all the pain and trauma that made me see that I have more galaxies inside me than tragedies.

You see, we are infinite within this skin we are in.

tell them how you weigh whole universes and storms and scars and stories, too.

we have every say in who gets our love.

In this house, we write response poems to our friends’ poems.

In this house, everything is hyperbole and metaphor.

Some things are just done off the page.

you own a fucking sword, I don’t expect you to be this tender

I’m going to have to stop calling it lowkey / everything I feel is so loud

as if no fraction of girlhood can go without punishment

never—not even once—did you tell me there was something in this world i couldn’t do.

Take out the parts that didn’t accept me and replace them with kinder models.

There are so many doors in my chest and I’ve given you keys to all of them.

no writer could conjure up a character with the strength to match ours.

We are all small universes out finding other universes to collide into.

the poems you read over the phone

But it is a privilege to be your sister when you share your storms with me.

the thing about storms is that they have the power to help things grow or drown them.

bring the lightning & i’ll bring the thunder; together, we will create such gentle wreckage.

be nothing if not relentless.