"New" is Almost Ironic

They say all air is recycled,
that the cycle of life
keeps turning, and we never really die.
We give and we receive
to the point where even the air we breathe
is something ancient.
I think we try to forget
how young we really are.
I think we like to forget
where we came from.
But where we come from,
is really just the string
of everyone who came before us,
and I cant help but wonder
where all that air goes.

I wonder if Frida Khalo's laughter
sits in the space between my fingertips,
or if Cleopatra's final breath passes
under the night sky until it's caught
between the grills of an 18-wheeler.
Another pre-madonna crashes
in her dressing room and I
can feel the smoke in her lungs.
I can feel the lightbulb
on her mirror burn out.
Another tragic beauty
makes the news this week.
Another memorial service
lights up the night and I wonder
if her family can sleep
with all those shining candles.

And I wonder whose blood
runs through my veins.
when that ancient dust enters my lungs,
do I take ownership of it all?
Do I take on another century of empathy
with every breath? My heart
pumps the pain of ghosts back to life
and you ask me why
my chest is so heavy.

I can taste Judas' lies
on the tip of my tongue,
run my hands through the air
and catch the wind
in the sails of Queen Anne's Revenge,
tangle my fingers in the pleas
of a Salem witch.
I can feel the air, full
of Bloody Sunday protesters, screaming
for the privilege of justice.
The spaces between us are never still.

We haven't even been here a day
and yet we continue to take
like the world is owed to us.
Our tragedy is global.
Our pain is never understood.
We feel loss like it isn't
as old as the sun.
Maybe our gift
is not to build but to rebuild,
not to create but to recreate,
to turn our fate in over our hands
like it's something we can change.

We can't forget where we came from
because where we came from is each other.
Every being has poured their breath
into the world to be used again,
their feelings caught in between
the living like feathers air in the wind.
Yet we have the audacity to believe
we are all one and only.
We only survived because we shared the fire,
and we'll only be able to thrive
if we keep passing the torch.