to have a single strand of iron tangled through your bones, the silver sheen of prickly words coating flimsy blood cells the azure color of tears against fingernails, so pale so pale they glint in spite of everything, everything you've never taught them it feels like I am drifting, sifting, shifting through some half state of being and the rusty taste of metal under your tongue the way it hurt to hear them speak the way your throat pinched shut the way the storm lost me, two fifths of the way to paradise