I think I made a wrong turn somewhere.
I mean, I guess- well, it's embarrassing, but I just kept following my GPS
even when the roads got rough
and my gut felt a little strange
(you know it, right? That twinge you start to get when you realize you have no idea where you are?)
and before I knew it,
I was in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe the batteries are low,
though you'd think they'd install some kind of warning about that-
I mean, people are depending on these things, you know, to get them places.
They've even got them in phones.
Google Maps, I hear.
Anyway, I really...I really think I'm lost.
Could you give me directions?
Apr 4, 2018
Apr 4, 2018 at 10:42 PM UTC
Black paint allowed to sit and separate into
oily, bleary, sticky, sick gray.
Spring flowers planted a week too early
wilted yellow under the last snow.
Pristine term paper fresh off the printer, carried through the rain
bleeding blood sweat and tear ink into obscurity.
(That was ten cents per page, you know.)
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018 at 1:27 AM UTC
you make me want to write something beautiful.
something like honey that drips on the lips,
golden and sweet and precious as amber-
or perhaps decadent frosting
made of buttercream, fresh vanilla-
constantly stirring the wrist, stirring the mind,
must fill the tongue with sugar and patience.
but how does one write that something?
how do these letters and commas and gathered dots (ellipses)
coalesce, rise, reach 415°F
without collapsing in on themselves,
or worse- growing doughy and sickly and peaking too early and too late?
....
could you teach me how to make, how to bake,
this beautiful food for the soul?
Mar 15, 2018
Mar 15, 2018 at 11:38 PM UTC
Identity is a lot like clothing.
It is rooted in the idea that you must-
absolutely must-
wear it in order to offer anything
to society.
But sometimes, your body changes.
It is a natural process,
a revolution of cells and mathematics
and biology merging,
stretching,
or thinning into white lines.
It is something that every human
inevitably experiences,
and yet we are taught to punish ourselves
for our bodies
if they do not fit the clothing
or the style
that is "in."
I used to be thin and nondescript.
I conformed easily;
my skinny jeans were snug and comforting
and entirely right.
But as I grew older,
they began to struggle to climb my hips,
to nestle my waist and claim ownership
of the land they once recognized.
They became a distraction.
They became a discomfort.
So I traded them for something looser.
Something new. Similar, yes, but different.
My friends did not understand.
"Why couldn't you just go a size up?
The old style was just fine.
A bigger size would suit you better,
so why not at least try?"
Why, indeed? I still wonder.
Perhaps it was because so many people
tried to buy me new clothes.
I didn't understand or particularly like
the ripped, frayed blue jeans,
and I definitely did not favor
the vulnerability of short skirts
or tight dresses.
Why should you dictate
what I decide to wear,
as if you have any right to my body?
Why do you insist on such precise fits?
Why can't I dance through my days
in something loose, something flowing,
something I myself don't understand?
Instead, I still tried to wear my old pants.
And when again they no longer fit,
stretched and miserable and wrong,
I lay down in the laundry basket
and waited to be discovered
and tossed out
with the ***** clothes.
Mar 13, 2018
Mar 13, 2018 at 1:16 PM UTC
I want to write about a girl
with auburn hair.
(It's not her natural color,
or at least it's not what springs out of her head,
but I think it's her true color.)
She is soft and severe,
fire and rain,
a smile that doesn't reach the eyes
and an effortlessly gentle soul
that shines from her gaze
when she's sure no one's looking,
but I usually am.
I can see that when somebody else notices her,
shutters fall and the house is boarded up.
It's hurricane season for her, always.
A never-ending tempest.
Swirling category four, cyclone in the flesh,
yet she stands there
solid-footed.
She is the eye of the storm.
She is the calm within the towering thunderstorms.
She touched my cheek accidentally
when she was helping disentangle my hair,
and I am caught in the wind and the rain
and the flame
and those green eyes.
Lord, help me not to sink.
There is no one here to help me if I do.
Mar 12, 2018
Mar 12, 2018 at 9:14 PM UTC
It started quietly, as most epidemics do.
A few victims, holes in the crowd; no one really notices them even when they're gone.
The same was true for me.
They saw that I was weak; they targeted me for pretending that I wasn't. It was a challenge to their superiority, and any rebellion must be culled.
This rebel could have caused an uproar, so they slipped a virus in my mouth
pressed my lips together
force-fed me poison
made me swallow
and watched my insides burn.
It locked onto my vocal cords, strangled me from the inside.
It gathered my heartstrings into angry fistfuls and knotted them together- made every heartbeat a struggle,
every beat beat beat a fight.
It burned my veins and severed my arteries, bleeding me out to the last aching drop.
They didn't understand the extent of the suffering they put me through.
I don't believe they would care either way.
I was silenced.
I was broken.
They broke me to pieces.
They dug my grave and left me at the precipice without the power to even stand or cry for help.
What was I supposed to do?
My knees buckled; I fell in.
They broke me, but they did not bury me.
I collected those pieces from the toiled, raw ground where they were meant to stay,
pick pick picked until my fingertips bled,
and put myself back together again.
After all, they'd bled all the sickness out with the rest of me.
The question became:
Who am I now?
Nov 1, 2017
Nov 1, 2017 at 12:09 AM UTC
out here, in the city, you can't see the stars because they bleed into the ink black canvas that is
the sky.
it's an imperfect black, a sickly pitch, with urban luster blotting out the deepest tones of indigo, scraping on orange luminescence around the edges of the sky canvas like God's pallet knife is rusty.
yet the sepia color is so much richer down below, confined in blazing streetlamps that flicker gold, in winking street signs- emerald, agate, rubies, precious gems in dented black boxes- and violet parlor advertisements that spray violent luminescence across the sidewalk.
it's beautiful in a lonely sort of way; I think the rainbow got a little tilted when humans tugged it from God's quiver.
isn't it strange?
how the most beautiful things can burn so brightly and bl o t out
the subtle radiance all around them?
how the artificial can seem so much more real than the stars shining overhead- invisible, forgotten diamonds- because it burns just a bit brighter, shines just a little farther?
oh; the sun is coming up.
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017 at 10:40 PM UTC
I want to lay with you.
to tangle my limbs with yours,
but out of peace,
melting into the warmth of your skin
(why are you always so warm?)
until the ice cold water of my own
becomes lukewarm,
stable,
tranquil.
cradle me beneath the sheets, please;
caress my hair and tell me with your touch
how much you love me
even if I can't- won't?- couldn't possibly
let you any closer
than skin on skin on scars,
fighting that precious balance
between comfort and loss.
teach me how to sleep again,
how to dream about you without waking up
with tear tracks on dusty cheekbones.
I want to feel your hands caress
the body I never really loved,
to teach me to love it,
to count and bless every freckle
and blemish
and the scars, visible and not,
cherishing the valleys and hills
of this pale, forbidden landscape.
erase away the memory of past hands
that did not know love
by the sheer gentle power of your own.
the trouble is,
that love is no longer mine.
I long for the long lost
with an ache that is palpable,
nestling in the hollows of my body
and wailing a soft lament in each sigh
of every sleepless night.
your fingers never traced these paths
because I was so afraid,
but was I afraid of you
or the monsters in the dark?
Oct 2, 2017
Oct 2, 2017 at 11:02 PM UTC
Take a look at me.
Wonder how I got here.
No, really- _wonder,_
don't assume,
because maybe that's humanity's
biggest problem.
Everybody thinks they're smart enough
to tell the story just by looking at its cover.
I am white. I am so white it's painful,
so pale I know the frustration
of never having found a foundation
in my color,
of having to settle,
of being too much of an inconvenience
to make a shade for.
But there is privilege in this;
there is no denying that,
none whatsoever,
and please know: I am not denying anything.
I can't. It is true.
My privilege is skin deep,
bone deep,
inescapable and ever evident,
but it did not get me here today.
Not entirely.
Because no matter how white I am,
my soul has never fit in.
It must be a motley of colors.
I am so white,
yet I'm not white enough-
eating alone and wearing the wrong clothes,
unable to read music
because we couldn't afford piano lessons,
and now that we have the money for birthday parties
no one will ever come.
I am ten shades less tan
than the preferred caucasian
and they will never, ever let me forget it.
I am judged the moment someone sees my family
because suddenly, the puzzle pieces must fit-
that's why she's successful,
she's a rich white girl-
except fortunate parents doesn't automatically
mean you get everything,
doesn't mean I didn't do chores,
doesn't ever mean I got paid for A's
or that college help was guaranteed.
I had to earn it.
A's were expected, chores a duty,
allowances non-existent.
I fought for my success and only then
was I promised assistance
to get through college without drowning in bills,
yet even then
I still had six figures to consider
and weeks' worth of scholarship papers
just to make it out with anything to my name.
Privilege was present,
but privilege was not the reason
I won enough scholarships
to make it through.
I worked.
(It is possible for a white woman to work,
as much as I've heard that it isn't.)
My skin won't tell you that I've suffered,
quite the opposite.
My skin won't admit the times
that I pulled at it, hated it,
the days I wanted to make my pallor permanent
and the day gooseflesh trembled
beneath a blade.
It can't tell you about the tears
or the panic attacks
or the abandonment or depression or inexplicable grief
for joy I never knew,
belonging I never experienced,
and privilege that could not protect me from assault
or hatred,
because most of you wouldn't be listening anyway.
I promise,
there are reasons for my self-loathing.
But you won't know it,
won't even realize it exists as a subplot,
if you refuse to open my book
and learn my story
because my cover is white.
You won't realize that
I am scared to let my friends meet my family.
You won't know I've lost friends after they have.
You won't know that I care,
that I'm angry too,
so furious my teeth are cracking
but I can't say a word.
I am not supposed to.
I have been scolded for it.
Everyone says
not to judge a book by its cover,
yet they still do,
tossing novels aside every day
because their binding is displeasing.
Maybe some of the authors before me
wrote horrible stories,
but you stand to discover an unexpected favorite
if you can give others a chance.
And you stand to find a fellow motleyed soul
by opening that shiny new book you can't trust,
don't want to trust,
and testing the waters of the first delicate page.
Aug 28, 2017
Aug 28, 2017 at 2:15 PM UTC
Sunlight is filtering in.
The floorboards are broken
and the counters deaf with dust,
but somehow,
these weak rays
are highlighting the rose,
the silver,
the gold
in every loose splinter
and wandering mote.
In this sunlight,
it even looks like stars
have settled into the living room
where no one else will walk
and certainly no one will eat.
This is acceptable.
There are beautiful galaxies to breathe
and a precious serenity
in the golden silence.
Jul 11, 2017
Jul 11, 2017 at 9:23 PM UTC