i was born of rough cloth.
it cradled me from youth
it kept me scarcely warm,
and amply humble.

but i grew a longing for silk and silver—
a softer touch,
a glimmer around my neck.

my head rests against your chest—
your cashmere skin greets my weary cheek
i hear that gem beating in your jewelry box
a scarlet ruby,
plated in the pure gold of your love.

i run my fingers through your amber satin ribbons.
you laugh a music box tune and i long to dance.

your smile shines in pure ivory,
and your eyes twinkle with a clarity
the finest of diamonds envy.

i look at you,
rich with love
and i remember
my wealth.

i fell in love with you because you were gold,
dazzling, brilliant, a comfort few can afford.
and i also fell in love with a silver heart,
a few less stars in their shine, but soul glimmering with humility.
i settled for second because i believed i was bronze;
the last place in a race, the dull brown of pennies
but where you saw me as tarnished brass,
i was their fool’s gold.
and you grew ever so dim that day
when they proved their weight
in so much more than you.

i was too tender and well-meaning in my youth to understand why each petal plucked from a flower felt so powerful. the way it tugged, the resistance. like a stop sign colored in a light rose pink. it was softly forbidden, you weren’t supposed to do it — but it wasn’t impossible. i didn’t understand power, but i felt it that day.

the flower was my first conquest. i made confetti of anything i could get my hands on — leaves, fruit, toys — i couldn’t stand to see anything whole. to the untrained eye, i was just messy and curious. i was, and i am.

but somewhere along the way, i was the one that was ripped to shreds. someone felt that power i did in my mom’s garden and graduated to people. so did i.

and i so wish i could say i cascaded softly to the ground with a whisper like a petal and not a resounding thud that echoed in the bottom of every bottle of alcohol i drank, in the cramped back of cars of strangers, at the edge of the pitch roof of my house. i wish i had that much grace.

i now understand how the flower petals, the pieces of fruit, the dolls without heads or arms must have felt — to be unwilling participants of a mosaic that didn’t even make a very pretty picture.

but at least i’m sharp if you dare to pick me up and put me on your wall.

my bedroom carries the headiness of stale captivity. the teeth of a years old trap are gathering debris where they’ve gnashed on my leg. my loved ones come to relieve me of my suffering.

the gentle winds bring me dead leaves in layers of red, yellow, brown and the occasional purple. “look at how they’ve changed,” the winds say. “things can change for you, too.” i brush them away. indignant, the winds whip dust and pebbles that become bullets at the right speed, threatening tornadoes that will never come. i wait until their lungs tire.

the cleansing rains rinse the matted blood from my wound and refresh my hot, mangled skin. “doesn’t that feel great?” the rains say. “you can feel like this all the time if you put in a little effort.” i dry myself down. angered, the rains disease the trap with rust and drench me until my bones attempt to float away, threatening tsunamis that will never come. i wait until the water recedes.

the giving earth sprouts a flower in the corner of my bedroom. “life is still growing, waiting for you,” the earth says. “you just have to come to meet it.” it’s a beautiful reprieve for my senses, i almost go to pluck it. as i come to realize my motions, my heart drops to an unknown place away from my chest. i hesitate. furious, the earth wilts the flower until it blends in with the rest of my bedroom. it shakes the ground violently, deepening the pain of the metal in my flesh. it delivered on earthquakes but threatened no aftershocks.

the lively sun dries me of the failures of the wind and rain and earth. the sun says nothing. i make no effort to repay its warmth. it reciprocates that lack of effort.

i have exhausted the affections of the elements, and in their abandonment now rests a deep stillness that urges me to look around.

over time, i have accumulated the barest of pleasures — some unread books, some unplayed records, some small tokens of loves long gone — that mimic a home, but bring you no closer to what that is supposed to feel like.

the odor in here is disgusting. unsophisticated in my aching, i wish for a sweet-scented breeze, or a balmy rain, or a fragrant flower.

or maybe i will just order a scented candle.

the rustling of the leaves in the trees
the audible tremble
of a collective chill
sounds just like the beach

my front porch
a shining metropolitan shore
the sun seems to soften into welcoming;
a different sun
that doesn’t scowl hotly over apartment complexes
and make liquid of asphalt and people

a benevolent warmth
you can only get
out of the city

the air rubs itself in coarse salt
and Coppertone

this glass of water
in my hand
may well be the ocean
the shift in my lap
the waves
a floating leaf
a boat
adrift on cerulean seas

the children laughing and playing here
are the same children
laughing and playing there, too

i am reminded that everything
can be given a new life
if you tell a wild heart
of an ordinary thing

if i just
close my eyes
a beach
is never far away

humanity is at constant odds with freedom.

it varies in definition – one man’s liberty is another’s snare. there is so much that is preconceived, that precedes and influences human thought, it makes freedom seem self-indulgent — a vehicle for ego-stroking and inflated sense of purpose.

freedom is simpler for others. it’s the one objective way to live — it’s the only way to live.

and maybe i’ve become too accustomed to the weight on my wrists that i refused you, vehemently opposed a chance to fly out from my cage into the new world. was i supposed to be thankful? i didn’t even know i had wings.

you released my usual tight ponytail from her tower upon my crown. black waves crashed upon the shore of my shoulders, i couldn't help but feel drowned in them.

you bared my skin from the safety of my clothes. you assured me that your touch was better armor for me. but there’s not enough free flesh of yours to cover what i wish to hide. a small ice age passed through the room every night, chilling me so deeply that not even your cloying warmth can stop the shiver of disdain traveling my spine.

you freed me from the comfort i used to have. you relinquished me from the safety of being me.

i tried to see everyday as a chance to grow comfortable, and everyday i had no choice but to be a stranger my own house because every chair was taken by your wants and every wall painted with your desires over mine that there was only standing room left for me.

i felt liberated in the way a captive animal roams its enclosure. i was king of a small domain, but a pawn to a larger kingdom. but i’d much rather liken your love to being an animal lead to slaughter with no wool over its eyes. it’s freeing, just not in the way you’d want.

when i finally gathered enough scraps of courage to tie my hair up again and sheathe myself in layers, i retreated back to my cage, not with my tail between my legs but the feathers on my chest ruffled with pride.

i believe more now than ever that freedom exists in the captivity of self. let me throw away the key and waste away in comfort.

orange and black is such a stark contrast for such a delicate frame.
flutter, flutter.
the color of caution,
and the color which brings about the need for it.
flutter, flutter.
is it not difficult to live like that?
to be painted this way?
your wings fold again at that, so i think that maybe you don’t mind it so much.
you are so loved the world over,
it doesn’t matter if sirens blare,
people will still call you beautiful with ringing ears and racing heartbeats.
am i envious?
maybe so.
flutter, flutter.
the sky whisks you away.
i was hoping you’d touch my hand before you go as if to say,
“there’s nothing here for me to fear.”
i’m left to wonder if there’s a danger shades of brown evoke.

i return to the world from my hours long sleep, leaving my bed still tangled in the tail end of my last dream. without even a chance to unstick my lungs from my back or wipe my bleary eyes, i shuffle towards the cabinet where i keep the coffee. i always have instant coffee – it’s not fresh, but the brevity is gratifying when you’re tired. it’s still habit for me to reach for this, but i put it back because there’s something better to come if i am a little patient.

you recoiling at the thought of instant coffee was funny at first, but i began to think why i continued to drink it. i wasn’t scared of the effort, but i couldn’t be bothered so i settled for what would be easy. but that changed the first morning i saw you in my kitchen brewing it for me. i couldn’t have been more in love.

the roasted scent no longer bitter and stale but fragrant, the espresso cascading over a cup of milk, delicately diffusing with the dairy in a loving long-term marriage they have always had. paired with your morning hair and sheepish grin, i doubted whether i really needed the caffeine.

i had never known coffee to taste this ambrosial, this good. when the warmth passed my lips it lit candles in the coves of every nerve in my body. you asked me if it was good and it was perfect. you said you’d make it for me like this all the time if i wanted and i wanted your coffee only if it came with your company. it was a good deal, you said.

soon i came to expect the coffee to be made and brought to me. i was spoiled by your kindness, which spoiled itself. you left the coffee machine and some grounds and other things to make it. it was never like yours, but i assume the taste would be off now if it was.

i turn on the machine, slowly awakening as my senses suddenly remember to do their jobs. the cream and sugar melt into the cup. it’s warm enough. it’s not like it was before, it never will be.

i throw away the instant coffee container, the last remnant of how things were before you. i can live in a post-you world comforted at least that something lives with me where you left empty space to die.

you’re here and gone in a flash, like the coffee i used to drink. a slow drip will see me through it all.

to be tangled in you is freedom. freedom from the constraints of being a person, from the loneliness of autonomy, from defining everything and myself to exhaustion. to lose myself completely, to not know where you end and i begin, to not know where i am and what is the jugular of peace. i’m not ensnared if it’s you. my mind is blank, my body reacts, and it’s so simple, it drives me to tears. you kiss your hand thinking it’s mine, you are so certain. and i think you enjoy being in the trap as much as you enjoyed setting it.

the paths leading to everywhere gleam onyx as the night in your daytime eyes.
the sky like your warm-milk skin, nighttime flecked with the brown sugar stars of your freckles.
flowers bloom in the delicate pink of your lips; every garden is an homage to your kiss,
every petal like your strawberry-preserve tongue on a stem.
i would never want for a life of technicolor bore,
if the world was painted in this palette of yours.

oil and water will always blame the other for being too extreme. there is a natural separation and naturally, a lot of blame.

how easy it is to feel self righteous in your rigidity, even in the presence of the one point in a glass where they meet. there, it is a softer rejection, a gossamer thin border, as if it resigns, “here, we exist as two separate we’s, stacked on top of one another, and that is as much as i will relent.”

what a shame it is to accept the shape of a container, but not the shape of one another. what a stab it is to my heart that you repel me, and i you, no matter how much i wish and struggle and vigorously shake us both hoping that this time, it will be different. what a pity it is that i’m me and you’re you and we’re not anyone else and it will remain unchanged, like you and i.

i could feel better if i knew you didn’t want it to be this way. that this life is just impossibly cruel and it’s nobody’s fault but the universe and the gods and whoever else made it my nature to resist you.

i plead silently for one more good stir, one more fair shot. it might work this time.

our shoulders brush slightly again. and i cry thinking that if you were to wipe my tears, they’d bead up and roll off of your hands.

who does heaven’s gate open for?
there is an ideal candidate, a type of person dripping with so much grace and benevolence it sickens the normal people passing by. even the kindest among us avoid the runoff.
are they even human?
i don’t part my lips for righteousness.
i don’t spare second glances at books on par with it, either.
let the sky open for the people i know. the real people.
the beggars and undesirables, the people who cut you like broken glass and lick your wound clean thereafter.
the people just getting by, doing anything to get right there and barely reaching beyond it.
the people who live in the margins, yearning to have their name written on a line someone will read.
let me see a sky as deep as time, as vast as androgyny.
open before us with warm arms and chest to sink our earth-weary souls into.
open unto us or we will make waste of the clouds and clip the wings of fleeing angels.
if it is not for me, i will pry the door open with my fingers.
i make my own welcome.

there was a tenderness reserved for me in her. like an eager extra setting at a table, still empty, as she yearned for my presence with dinner time inching impossibly closer. it was like she was playing house and she was smushing our two dolls together. she’d smile at me to pass her the salt and add a wink, because she can. building our own little sinkhole world in the middle of her parents’ dining room. i couldn’t hear her mother ask me what i do for a living.

her family would be delightfully curious of the kind of person who could hold their precious girl’s love and attention. i’d tell them who i was in a nutshell, but she giggled at what was purposefully left unsaid.

they knew the her before me, and the her after me was beaming light to land planes. before, they said, maybe she could just power a small town. the spark in her eyes was threatening to jump the slight curb of her waterline and light everything aflame. she would laugh as we tried to put it out and she’d pull me away running like accidental arsonists.

afterwards, hand in hand, we’d sit on her back patio and laugh a belly laugh. nothing was really funny, just life was electric and it made a sound.

the sugar bowl rests on the table, anchoring the vinyl tablecloth patterned with bowls of fruits that never became famous.

flies orbit around it like the sun, blissfully unaware of the fly paper hanging in the corner,
looming like God over the room.

a ceiling cemetery,
a paper paradise.

i look at the mummified insects and i wince.

my fingertips trace the rim of your mouth
and my skin pebbles.
i wet my finger and indulge in you again.

a fly trap awaits me.

i ask you, rose
where you got your renowned red
your baby’s breath seem to hold theirs
and your delicate petals slowly unfurl
as if to say,
“by blooming”

i ask you, sky
where you got your horizon’s hue
and your ivory gossamer-thin clouds flesh out suddenly
your azure obscured from my view
as if to say,
“this is the color i prefer you to see”

i ask you, ocean
where you got your summery salt
and you begrudgingly lap the sand again and again
with a watery crash and a rush of sea foam
as if to say,
“would salt not rise in you, too?”

i ask you, night
where you got your pitch dark
and as stoic as you are
i see the twinkle of a diamond in your dusk
as if to say,
“if i am dim, someone else will be bright for me”

i ask you, me
where you got your callous heart;
from the vulnerable openness of a flower?
or the shyness of the sky’s expanse?
was it from the salt of a sea raging inside you?
or the stars who ignore your woeful nights
while they bask in their own glow?
and hot tears threaten to spill on my cheeks
as if to say,
“this earth, and my time on it”

people change, that’s one of the things i love most about people — that we will never be the same twice, for better or for worse. but i want to be selfish for once and keep you just as you are right now. as someone who loves me.

the way you suffer is completely unique to you. no one can ever hurt like you, weep like you, die like you. in its singularity, there is, at the very least, awe for its chameleon-like nature. if there is beauty and love and gentleness in a wound, it is that it is distinct.

there’s irony there, in the heart. in every beat, there’s a bit of mirth. protected by the chest, obfuscated by layers of blood, bone, and tissue — the heart is a recluse creature, mistaken to be wild and free buried under the soil of the body. yet she is demanded to be of glass — clear with a fragility that doesn’t suit her. “beat for me,” they demand, and she stills. “show yourself to me,” they ask, and she sinks further down. “i won’t hurt you,” they promise, and if she had eyes, they’d be rolled. leave her be, and if you should make the journey to reach her, she might skip a little at having been discovered in good-natured company.

the salt in my skin grants me a bit of safety
from those who lap at the souls of the weak. the one or two who dared to taste me recoiled their tongues, mouths more sour for having wasted saliva on me.

i understand how to live as a sharp misfortune of the senses.

but i don’t understand you, with your heart an expanse of sweet sand, ready to give a spoonful for a bitter tea, or a hearty cup for a neighbor with sudden need.

don’t you see the crows circling, waiting to gorge on your ripe heart? they take pieces like hard candy from a bowl, hoping to find their whole from a beauty best not enjoyed in parts.

i don’t understand you, how you share so sweet a thing with drifters on a sugar fix, a knowing smile dancing on your face. crows dressed in a finch’s feathers chirp their pathetic thank you song and it is enough for you.

but if we tasted each other, your mouth would pucker and i’d be no better than the crow with your love in its beak.

to love and be loved is to relinquish control of everything.
to love and be loved is to unlearn the games you are taught to play and facades you are supposed to keep.
to love and be loved is to be raw and open and animal and ugly and beautiful — all at once.
to love and be loved is to live in the valleys in one another so next time, it may rise to meet you.
to love and be loved is to be the emergency and the relief, the storm and its eye, the night that hides and the morning that will never let you.
to love and be loved is to kiss and fall silent over and over again until you tire of lips and move elsewhere.
to love and be loved is to be extraordinarily human and divinely felt.