my younger self
rains on me like dew – she has given me
a new dawn, and as I awake
I feel
her mist. I want to thank her for
her sacrifice, but she
is too young to understand
that it is a sacrifice. She believes in love
she believes in love
but she
does not believe she deserves it.
still,
she gives warmth, holding me like lips
******* on a thumb
– young young young
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 2:40 AM UTC
in the summer before
everything ended,
we went to an art museum
that had entire rooms showcasing death
and you pulled me away before I could admire the human composition
stains, melted into bronze silhouettes, because
what if I thought it looked ugly
what if I figured out
I didn’t actually want to **** myself
and instead just wanted to escape you –
stains of strawberry juice around my mouth I thought of
as blood and you thought of
as lipstick
I prettied myself for
suicide , I scratched maps into my thighs – little guides of where a
knife would go
little hopes that if I saw the death display
maybe I would have known.
for years
it was all experimental. I watched pieces of us
come and go like art exhibits, you watched me as if I was nothing but
a work in progress
that soaked up so much paint I could
not help but look like you when it was through. I was
a child, was
impressionist (impressionable –
now your thoughts persist
as human composition stains – happily, I am alive
and you will never be dead enough.
Apr 20, 2015
Apr 20, 2015 at 2:47 AM UTC
you said “you are a woman
but pure” –
I was neither
I was a rotting peach
you opened up too soon, my softness
my sweetness
went to waste. **** you
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 1:14 AM UTC
I liked that crowded bathroom
we smoked in,
you held a joint between my lips and asked me to
exhale out the window
into the soft wooden fence between
us and the neighbor’s house. The walls
of that crowded bathroom
were pink
or lilac or something – I liked them
as you would expect,
but I don’t exactly remember
them. I remember my body feeling like too much
because the space was small and I am not;
my skin seemed to billow
out like tulle
to touch yours. Your dad gifted us
two different joints he had been saving for a
while, saying one was better
than the other but
he did not know which was which. In
that crowded bathroom, I looked up at you and
you looked down at me
because we knew
we had just found the better one. We kissed
then walked
out the door, saving half for later.
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 12:55 AM UTC
little lune,
my delicate moon
I wonder
how comfortable
you are inside my womb
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 3:30 AM UTC
we’ll stay up all night
and choke each other with our tongues
only catching our breath when
our mouths are forced into yawns. i will be the
first to fall asleep,
obsessed with the way
you fold your body into fourths
at night
to make sure none of mine gets lonely.
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 3:16 AM UTC
the boy I am sitting cross-legged in front of
shares the same bruises as me
and we create new ones
on each other,
swelling like sweet gumdrops
or ripe fruit. his hands mold me
into a mulberry –
I bleed
sugar and water and sap. I close my eyes so that
it can be a surprise,
the stains I will wear for weeks.
we have loved so hard since we met,
we created puncture wounds
into each other
****** the salt out
then bandaged each other up and smiled at
the soreness.
the togetherness of it all,
opening ourselves up so that the other
can love our insides, too. his
is the burn of incense with the silk of warm
milk,
and I am laying down
in the happiest ache from him
knowing we wear our skin down until it is so
thin that
we can't help but feel all of one another.
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 3:09 AM UTC
I remember being told
that what I found with you, I will find again
and I did not know why but I
cried
cried
and cried
until my body felt so heavy
it could compare
to how you would feel on top of it.
your eyelids, then
began to look like little halos
whispering
that they were still pure – your heart, then
would beat
every time I thought of you
because I never
ever
ever
could stop
(even when I was lying to myself,
I only wanted to lie about you).
for weeks, then
I only knew how to speak
in organs and flesh
in fluids and ***
when all I needed was a way to explain
that
somehow, when we met
we found a corner of the earth
no one had
ever
ever
ever seen before
and we inhabited it together
so no one else would find it again.
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 8:45 PM UTC
Men have always told me that I am nothing
like “her” - the woman, the women,
before me.
I love like powder
silently leaving pieces of myself to sink
into their skin
(making them softer, sweeter).
My emotions are a hum in the room,
they steal all the air
but I am hush
and small; I exist in only the smallest ways
like noticing a man’s veins
then
caressing him in circles,
tracing him
connecting them like vines. I pretend
it does something,
I pretend to cast a spell
but I never say a word – I am the ghost
of hope
for men, I am
their good luck charm
(my magic
never noticed unless it works). Never am I
like the women before me
but how
I wish I had the strength to be.
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 8:14 PM UTC
I watch humans fumbling to make a connection between the universe and our bodies, as if without their metaphors and poems likening birthmarks to galaxies, we would be two separate entities, a collection of particles that inhabit entirely detached spaces from one another. Truly, the connection is evident in far more than freckles that resemble specks of dust and planetary material; our skin is not just branded by our environment, but bloated by it.
We are made of mostly water. We are oceans, our insides are swampy, and when we bleed, the sight is reminiscent of sunsets. There is a universe beneath our flesh, internally, like how we exist within the flesh of our universe.
I feel this connection most when I consider him. My body deflates into a cloudlike existence –soft, floating, pacified. His touch warms me, it calms me, it grounds me but in the sense that I am still free to kiss the stars, and my lips become soothing to them.
One of our final nights together, about midnight on Valentine’s Day, he took me to the beach and faced me in front of the ocean, stood me below a dome of astrology in the skies. Lucid blue from the constellations and water stretched for what seemed like days, all-encompassing me. But my eyes could not leave him, especially his mouth slipping into smiles, because somehow he appeared even more beautiful than the immensity of our earth enveloping me. He cradled me there, he lifted my dress, and still I felt warm against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean in winter.
He is a dream, and he is an angel, and I believe he steals ornaments from the sky to gift to my heart so that I can feel as beautiful and as grand as all the universe combined.
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 11:31 PM UTC