My birth would be described as traumatic.
Tragic.
You see I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my throat,
and one of my lungs had collapsed.
The very thing that gave me life was taking it away.
They laid me on a cold metal table and I began to struggle,
I was whisked away to a plastic box,
Skin to skin contact,
I wouldn’t know what that was for another week.
When I was five I ripped open my neck, on a barbwire fence,
They said it was millimeters away from slicing my jugular vein.
It felt like some unknown force was focused on my throat.
If I couldn’t be strangled, maybe I would bleed.
And now since I haven’t bled maybe, just maybe,
I can still be suffocated under the tragedy of a misunderstood existence.
Maybe the isolation will suffocate the brilliance within my heart.
But I find tragedy can become poetry, in the right context.