Checkmate (new poem)

The world tilts
to see if I’ll slip off its ledge.
I don’t.
I never do.

I am outrunning my shadow,
drowning it on the moon.
Floating on feathers,
I bend the rainbows
to outgrow the grays.

I fit in your pocket
with my fingertip stars.
I could be taller than the crumbling mountains
but choose to be sand in your pants.
A strange choice,
mine. And it is fine.

Dancing waves in the ocean
run towards the shore.
Fire and glass
grow underneath my feet,
and I wonder
where the ghost of me has gone.
Did my soul
swallow it whole?

If you blink the flies away too many nights
I will disappear.
Whispers crawl up the raindrops of my thoughts,
a spider’s net hunting them all.

I am sleeping
on checkered emotions
with colours sewn onto me.
Checkmated. Checkmate.