hello like a cup of strong coffee at 6 am.
hello like rain, that isn't really rain, but more-so, a dusting of droplets that only really wet my eyelashes.
hello like the yellowing bends of denim and every last loose thread on my father's hand-me-down jacket.
hello like getting drunk and taking all of my body piercings out.
like waking up the next morning and re-piercing them myself.
hello like poking through.
hello like blood.
hello like oxidization and my favorite brand of adoration, that one that turns to grit and rust on my tongue.
hello like, "yes i am ready for things to get better now".
hello like, "i have no idea how to contribute to things getting better now".
hello like learning the words to my favorite songs again.
hello like learning how to write poetry again.
doing it badly.
not really caring.
hello like this time, no one will say goodbye until i **** well say it's time to leave.
this is the year i cease being a revolving door for half-hearted apologies,
they taste like old chewing gum, these ghostly heart-beaten impressions i've collected.
from now on,
bring me something beating,
bring me something warm,
bring me something red.
bring me your hello.
Sep 12, 2017
Sep 12, 2017 at 12:31 PM UTC
two days
before we loaded the car
with what seemed like the entirety
of my heart and belongings
to move me across the state to attend college,
my baby brother found me on the kitchen floor,
crying
about the microwave.
well,
not just the microwave.
he found me in a crumpled up heap,
sobbing that this day
would be the last i had
to microwave things
in
this
particular
microwave.
i couldn’t justify my lament then.
my dad chalked it up to ***
my brother called me a drama queen,
and my mom told me i needed to eat less microwaveable things.
but i think i might’ve figured it out now.
five months later.
y’see, i grew up an ARMY brat.
attended five different elementary schools,
two separate middle schools,
one high school,
and two colleges.
i was never good at saying goodbye,
but i’m a pro at walking away.
i found out quickly
that while the faces and names
of my friends and classmates
change from state to state,
the character tropes
stay basically the same.
people and places become such replaceable things.
i worry,
a lot,
about being a replaceable thing.
there are talented people in this world.
people that can divine the past and future
from coffee grounds and tea leaves.
but can anyone here tell me what kinds of awful things my footsteps say about me?
there are boot marks,
with my name on them,
in places i know i should never have been.
and clumps of dirt stuck to my heels
that have been with me longer than some friends have.
i sat on the floor last night
while my love explained physics to me.
he told me
that gravity is a constant force,
and of course,
the earth’s gravity affects each and every one of us.
but our individual gravity affects the earth as well.
according to newton’s third law,
the earth pulls of me
with the same force that i pull on the earth.
my mass disrupts space time.
carl sagan once told me
through the clarifying prism of the television screen,
that we are all stardust,
collapsed suns
and black matter.
we belong to no place.
i belong to no place.
i belong to no place.
i don’t cry about the microwave anymore,
i don’t waste my tears on saying goodbye.
i know that every thing and every one has their time,
and sometimes that time is brief.
it’s a hard pill to swallow,
ultimately my favorite self descriptor is ‘infallible’.
but somedays, i fall
just to stand up and see:
the sun still rises,
the earth still turns,
the microwave still makes bomb-ass chicken nuggets,
and i am still here.
Nov 16, 2016
Nov 16, 2016 at 11:28 AM UTC
if we were to assign emotions to colors -
passion would be where magenta and orange kiss the horizon at sunset,
joy would be the yellow of my socks every easter sunday that i can remember,
and melancholy would be just another shade of blue.
i told him,
i am not done with you yet.
three weeks post breakup,
we shouldn't feel as unfinished as we do.
like, in the ridiculously complicated narrative of he and i,
the author got up one day,
scribbled a quick ending,
and then set the novel on fire.
i read an article in an obscure magazine
about Shelley Jackson,
an artist
who got thousands of people
to tattoo a singular word
from a story onto themselves,
and then sent them back to their scattered existences.
maybe that is what this is,
another scattered story.
another vaporized narrative.
i can feel it in the air,
but not pull the phrases together.
it's like trying to hold onto smoke.
our story slips through my fingers and gets in my eyes.
if we were to assign emotions to colors -
my ribcage would look like a Jackson *******
my head would be a paintball arena.
i am so full of indigos,
and mustards,
and crimsons,
that Van Gogh, himself, would dip into my palette
and claim to have never seen such beautiful sadness before.
*i don't know if it hurts because it still matters,
or if it matters that it still hurts.*
i feel the frenzied ache of creation in my gut.
i am not a painter,
but my mirror is showing me
the immaculate collection of brushstrokes
i have become.
a few weeks ago,
i was approached by an artist who offered to paint my bruises.
to collect my contusions with watercolors.
what a beautiful intention,
to immortalize the growing pains,
memorialize the bumps along the way,
to make something permanent
of these perpetual transitions.
if we were to assign emotions to colors -
my pride would be gold-plated and rusting from use, like my grandfather's watch,
courage would be the pure green of every bud that has dared to grow through concrete,
and love?
love would be prismatic,
like spilled oil on asphalt.
a rainbow one moment,
vanished the next.
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 2:03 PM UTC
(i think that) it is poetic injustice -
that (to be fruitful) seeds fall away from their kin, (children),
(are) carried away in the guts of fauna,
(rooted in) soil far from (their parentage)
and told, "grow".
Aug 24, 2016
Aug 24, 2016 at 6:26 PM UTC
who knew that growing up,
feels a lot like growing thin?
who knew my weathered bones
would grow to hardly recognize the skin that they live in?
i’m tired
and when i say that
i mean more than just the sleepiness that seems to reside permanently around my collarbones.
i’m heavy
with the weight of converging adolescence and adulthood
like kissing life-milestone tectonic plates,
they bury us.
we spent the last of summer days soaking up what little sun the mountain range allotted us,
and the last of summer nights gathered closely around the burning ends of our post sunset cigarettes
murmuring that there must be more than this.
striving to make the grade without making ourselves insane.
substantiating our existences with substances and excess.
growing closer to these ragtag companions we’d patch-worked together in a few months time than friends we’d known for years,
this is family.
this is kin.
they say that nothing compares to the first breath of spring but i digress,
the first breath of freedom - that first whisper, no matter how tainted with ash and glitter and the ever-present impending air of responsibility it may be,
is truly incomparable.
but, on the first night you find yourself talking someone down from the dangerous concoction of stimulants and ego,
listening to them scream about how they hate the world, and you, and themselves,
remember your arboreal roots.
remember that there are trees that survive forest fires with their lives but not their branches.
that same night you will see in the mirror how resilient buds can bloom through ice, and concrete, and self-loathing.
you will find solace in persephone.
letting a piece of you die each and every winter seems a fair price for the rebirth of spring.
i cannot say that this will be the last night you find a friend on their bathroom floor,
like a child with matches, trying to strike away the unruly sprouts that have taken root under their skin
i cannot say with confidence that you will never find yourself there either.
there will be more forest fires coming your way
like a child with matches, you may start a few yourself.
but, darling, spring is around the corner
you may be mangled and gnarled and knotted,
but i have seen trees engulf steel, and watched as flora took back abandoned gardens
i have witnessed oceans of grass shoot up from ashes,
there is nothing manmade that the earth cannot take back
the earth will take you back,
there is still green within you.
count the dandelions you find poking their cadmium heads through asphalt,
remember inhabitance is not a matter of comfort but a matter of will.
feel the ripe bud of growth in the soles of your feet.
remember there is nothing wrong with returning to the dirt.
Aug 8, 2016
Aug 8, 2016 at 12:43 PM UTC
my mother tells me
that love can be found at the bottom of a cup of coffee,
and i believe her.
she calls it her "elixir",
drinks half a *** by herself
with french vanilla creamer.
calls me my father's daughter for being unable
to stomach the taste of cream and sugar.
my mother likes her coffee sweet.
i drink mine without additives,
half burnt from sitting in the *** for an hour.
i swirl the dark brew at the bottom of my cup
before giving up
on taking the last sip.
the last sip of coffee makes me gag.
my mother tells me
that love can be found at the bottom of a cup of coffee,
and i believe her.
May 5, 2016
May 5, 2016 at 7:07 PM UTC
YOU ARE:
melodrama.
sunsets on mountains and poetic weekends.
“if you write about me, i will blush when you read it.”
playing my guitar.
playing with my hair.
playing with me.
“do you want to get something to eat?”
“are you tired?”
“let me in."
holding me down, in the best possible way.
approved by my mom.
poetic texts and the reason i’ve been clutching my phone.
too good to me.
YOU ARE NOT:
what you appear to be, you are so much more.
what i expected.
disappointing.
sure about where this is going, neither am i.
a manic decision, although you may seem like it now.
alone.
mine.
mine.
mine.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 1:45 PM UTC
hope is a burning buddha candle.
set aflame with his ornate head slowly melting.
we sat in silence and blew the candle out before his waxen ears met his shoulders, but you would’ve liked to have seen him exist in a puddle.
you sit quietly that morning and wonder what it would be like to exist in a puddle.
you decide that you would have liked it.
hope clings itself to the fabric of the floral sundress you bought two weeks before the leaves turned shades of burgundy and ochre.
when asked why you bought it, you shrugged it off.
you wore it, baring shoulders and all, alone in your room with the blinds open.
the september sun glanced at you and you at it.
you were never a dress person, but the blue and pink flowers seemed at home on your torso
and who were you to separate blooms from their home?
hope is your baby brother showing up at your door, sand blonde hair reminiscent of the beaches you were raised on.
he smelled like salt and violent adolescence.
in his hands, he clutched four large pieces of fruit that he stole from the hotel because he said that the fruit bowl from home missed you.
you saw novels in his seafoam grey eyes that read that he missed you, too.
you hugged him
too tight
too many times.
you didn’t cry when he got in the car, but you did when he called you later and said that he was counting down the days to christmas.
there were 114, now there are 109.
hope is st. elmo’s fire and holding your best friends hand as you explain to him that you always felt like ionized plasma.
that you’re like lightening, but not quite.
it is stopping the car on the side of the road to pick wildflower bouquets and press them between the empty pages of your new journal.
it is squash blossom pizza and $60 parking tickets because you were too lazy to catch the bus.
hope is writing a poem and, for once, it not sounding like a eulogy.
hope is writing a poem and not hearing your voice shake as you recite it.
hope is writing a poem and finally feeling like a poet.
hope is writing a poem and finally living like a poet.
hope is writing a poem.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 1:22 PM UTC
the last time we spoke, he called me “shrapnel” and the way his tongue curled around the word made me glad to be explosive. he told me once that the way she moaned implosion on his neck made him feel like an atom bomb. looking back on this past summer, all i see is red. honestly, i never asked for him, and he never asked for me, but circumstance and fate had a heated argument and we were the resolution. i had never fallen in love before, and while he walked around with “trouble” tattooed on his wrists and an arsonist’s grin, i found something calm within him. no one warned me that summer will simultaneously kiss your cheeks and break your heart. by then, i had already spent years and years cutting the thorns off of roses before he came along and asked me why i wasn’t planting sunflowers to begin with. i still don't have an adequate answer. on our first date, he told me that aspiration is a characteristic of the flames that burn down thousand year old cathedrals and ambition is a trait of the inferno. i asked if him the hollowed out stone bodies of these houses of god still flinch at the strike of a match. he didn’t know, but he kissed me and i think i figured it out. together, we were mushroom clouds, firecrackers on the fourth of july, smoldering camp fires. we were blazing and bright, flaming and fervent. but now summer has ended, and the flames have died. like a smothered candle, there was no fight. no fire. luminescent absolution was where i found myself when sticky, sweet summers and screened in doors hiding broken intimacy came to meet. i was ready for guns blazing and violence: darling, arson was always my specialty. i’d rather him set fire to my lungs and watch the rest of me ignite than calmly say goodbye and walk away. these sparks escaping from my chest are from the wildfires within me and also my lust for incendiarism. i know it’s over but i’m still lit up like a cigarette, wishing to be crushed by his lips again, to be on the tip of his tongue again. we were a fiery bed, and i found comfort in the ashes and embers. the last time we spoke, he called me “shrapnel” and the way his tongue curled around the word made me glad to be explosive. but shrapnel is just another result of the fire, a repercussion of getting too close to something volatile. shrapnel is for survivors. shrapnel is for those who walk away. i am many things, combusted and burnt out, but i am not shrapnel.
Sep 22, 2015
Sep 22, 2015 at 5:51 PM UTC
i like a boy who likes the rain -
who damns the sunshine while finding solace in thunder and lighting, the pitter patter of drops on a tin roof.
i'm more of a dreary, overcast person. i feel most at home on this planet when the sun seeks shelter from the impending storms; but he smiles when the sky turns grey, and i find myself smiling, too.
i like a boy who wiggles his hips when he sings.
it's in his nature; he dances.
sometimes with the radio, sometimes the phone as it rings, and even me when i sing.
i find solace and comfort in music, but he celebrates it. and as he shrugs his shoulders to the bass line of a song whose lyrics i will never understand, but will always relate to, i find myself swaying, too.
i like a boy who tells me i am starlight; constantly. when i am cramming the last bit of food in my mouth, when i am pouring sweat from being in the sun all day, when i am bed-headed and smeared-makeuped holding onto him for dear life. he tells me that i am the beginning and end of the universe. he tells me that i am beautiful. he smiles and looks at me like he is a starving man, and i am the last morsel of sustinence on the planet. and i find myself believing it, too.
Jun 28, 2015
Jun 28, 2015 at 4:46 PM UTC