Redacted

by Rhea Brennan

invisible hands are not always silent

they wrap around the unlatched mouth,
the screams burning
holes through each finger, but the hands aren’t
the familiar ones sewed together with veins and skin whose palms
reach towards a promised sky, but
some sort of middle ground from
the hunter and the prey.

stuffed between the hills of right and wrong
here in the valley that runs between, lies the truth.

where the hands are not allowed, the signatures

written in strangers blood are not enough to strike through a memory.

so
the long nails dig into the young flesh
it swore to protect
and swiftly covers the scars with tape, labels, names.

controversial.

troubled.

dissent.

criminal.

liar.

liar what they will call me
once my “child” label expires
and chains of promised free speech are locked around my wrists. sentences
released through my gritted teeth
will be stained
with burning red circles, marked for targets
as i will be marked alongside them.

maybe then they will
call me bullets
and i will pierce through the air

for a blinding second
before landing amid a drywall and forgotten as just another mouth the
hands
couldn’t or wouldn’t control — does it matter when either way
the bandaged faces will line up
comparing the scars as numbers
circle around the ocean floor beneath the hills, letters will
flee from the faces of the
outspoken
and the dead
alike,
picked up in the next ferry boat and thrown alongside
everything
else taken by force.

leaving behind blacked out
eulogies and whispers
glaring down at the array of footprints that lead each pair of
invisible hands as they lighten until unmistakable with the grains of sand,

fallen.

unnamed.

trivial.

conquered.

stolen.
a tongue does not have to be removed to be stolen, similarly a
knife doesn’t always bleed with red —

air can be shoved back down the throat, suffocated

with the word
redacted.

Rhea Brennan is a freshman at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas. She enjoys writing poetry and fiction, all types of art and listening to music.