Breath broke like a glass against a ship.
Like a naming.

Scared had never meant something this hard.
Packed like a path, I could hold it in my hands.

I didn’t belong to what I swallowed or what I stood on.

Someone who had never existed lay dying,

Aleph Altman-Mills is a fifteen-year-old autistic writer who loves swinging and skirts. She has been published in The Legendary, Words Dance, and Mobius, among others. She blogs and posts poetry snippets at really-fucking-confused.tumblr.com.