your name is the only thing that makes the alphabet matter,
I knew this was real when you told me to stop dreaming
and start living. I love you.
it'll never change.
Sep 19, 2018
Sep 19, 2018 at 3:21 PM UTC
it's unnerving how easily a pair of eyes strip me down
and take away every layer of defense
I have built up over the years.
hey sweetie, why don't you come over here?
because I don't want to, because you're repulsive
and your voice is scary and I felt your eyes on me
from the instant I crossed the street and I was hoping
you wouldn't speak.
want me to show you a good time?
but I was having the best time before I knew you existed,
when I was still just a person walking home
and the silent threats you make hadn't made it to
the horizon of my mind
**** what you doing walking around with hips like those?*
hips like these belong to my mother and
her mother and all of the women that have come
before me. in my body I possess history and blood
so strong it was only ever spilled during times of war.
how dare you. attempt to take that strength and power and pride
away from me. don't you know that I am magic,
that my body exists as art only
I should be allowed to admire
who gave you permission to steal from god's temple?
[I still see the dark look in your eyes
when you said that to me, the emptiness of
your pupils haunt me. they say that you see
me as nothing more than a body, a corpse.
someone to walk over.
someone to conquer.
you licked your lips and winked, the
wrinkles in your skin were clear even in the dark
and I could see that your two front teeth were
missing, so now I can't stop having nightmares
you grabbing me and tearing me apart, using
the same legs you whistled at as toothpicks]
*why are you walking so ******* fast?*
because you are terrifying. because I know
despite how brittle your bones may appear
there is a large chance if you catch me I won't
escape. because the risk of not escaping is an
automatic death to me in every sense of
the word. because I have friends, and they have
told me how their bodies were pillaged at the
hands of men like you.
*who the **** do you think you are?*
I think I am an island and I wish you
wouldn't insist on being so intrusive.
**** you too, *****
I just want to go home. I just want to go home.
why can't you let me do that?
you're not even that pretty anyway
when I met up with my best friend
she hugged me
and said I smelled like vanilla,
that I got more beautiful over the summer,
and that boys are going to lose their minds
when they see me.
my mother shows me off
boastfully, brags about my small waist like it
is a trophy, tells all my family that I am
peligrosamente hermosa,
dangerously beautiful.
and I believed them until I met you.
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 3:21 PM UTC
the first time I saw you smile
I understood photosynthesis
I knew then why
flowers died
without the sun and
how my entire life
I had been wilting
Slowly
without your warmth
then I heard you speak,
your mouth poured honey
So sweet
I was positive you kept
bees in the root of your teeth
I didn’t even know you
and yet I was convinced
I would grow to love you
you told me your name
and I cried
Silently
at how beautiful it was
H, I don’t think you understand
see I had spent the hours of
sleepless nights carving you
into my bones
so much so that you had already
become apart of my skeleton
before you even knew who I was.
and you learning who I am was
the best part. I watched
Fireflies
erupt in your eyes as I told
you my favorites of everything
and I had grown so accustomed
to seeing that
Light
in your eyes
I didn’t even noticed when it
Faded.
see I had dug you into
my bones, so even when you
Left
you still weren’t
Gone.
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 24, 2018 at 3:11 PM UTC
I found her under my bed,
the way I imagine little kids find monsters
or mothers find empty pill bottles
she was shaking
the last time I saw her we were both
hiding under the bed but summer came,
I let it's warmth into my frozen body
and forget that the sun harvested
poison berries.
I escaped but she stayed, told me that
I would find her once again
here we are.
I could see the goosebumps along her arm
and asked her
why are you so cold
she smiled,
the kind of smile where her lips curl at the ends
and her teeth are hidden
don't you know it's winter?
I glanced at the sky and saw the snow fall.
I guess it is winter after all.
Sep 1, 2017
Sep 1, 2017 at 4:46 PM UTC
I have given fragments of myself to people
who have only broken them into smaller pieces;
at this point my skeleton is made more of paper
thin apologies and not actual bones so when
I become an avalanche of emotions I've convinced
myself I don't feel and anxiety, when even the
shadows that still manage to scare me have managed
to fall asleep but I still haven't, there is nothing left
to turn to but this poem. and I don't know what this is.
I could call it an ode to all the people that have decided
I am just a damaged garden and there is nothing poetic
about planting flowers where the sun does not exist but
even then that would insist there were people willing to
plant weeds in abandoned graveyards
in the first place.
maybe I am selfish.
maybe it is wrong to want people to stay;
how could I have ever expected you
to love me when I never loved myself?
all I have are memories.
people I can only write stanzas about.
letters I can only read over and over again trying to
convince myself that I must've mattered.
I have given fragments of myself to people who have only
broken them into smaller pieces. this poem is probably
just an ode to my imagination for actually believing my
relationships with them were ever anything more
than just that, fragments
(h.l.)
Oct 31, 2016
Oct 31, 2016 at 8:19 PM UTC
jan from the corner store doesn't understand me,
I told her I wasn't mixed; my parents are just different
shades of the same color but she doesn't believe me,
and the man behind the counter silently agrees.
the old white lady that always takes the 5 train
stares at me curiously, her eyes say they don't trust me
and I don't understand why. I never thought I had to
explain myself to strangers or that my race was the most
interesting thing about me but that's always the
first question everybody asks.
my aunt told me the other day that I was jabao,
in other words, nobody knows what to do with me.
I am unidentifiable. my skin screams the sun and
stars too small to recognize; it says I am the product
of a collision between the blackest sea and the whitest sand.
some parts of my body sing a ballad so dark only certain
people would ever want to listen to. maybe these are the
parts that the old white lady on the five train is scared to
listen to. maybe the curls I tried so hard to straighten are
what terrifies her, maybe the black in my kneecaps keeps
her up at night, maybe the sound of boisterous music in a
language she could never understand makes her skin jump,
sends shivers down her spine makes her think twice
about who I am.
jan from the corner store doesn't understand me,
I told her I was jabao, a mix of summer glow and
muted winter skin. but she doesn't believe me; says
she has never met a Dominican like me, that in some ways
I must be a mixed breed. and the man behind the counter
silently agrees.
(h.l.)
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 9:03 PM UTC
she is thin and wiry and so unbelievably charming it
is hard to believe everything she says is not straight out
of a 1980's movie that changed cinematic history
because for once the girl asks out the guy and I am just
a shattered home left battered after a hurricane
she is a ghost and I mean that in every sense of the word,
when she left I felt my brittle bones collapse
inside of my sunken body as if it were a cave
and like acid I dissolved myself into everything
as a distraction to try and forget her but
she still haunts me with her smile and her laugh
and when I sleep I find myself imagining her as the shadows
created by the moonlight
her love was toxic. I know this because her voice still
shouts at me to do things despite the distance that has
grown between us; when I met her I was in a bad place.
I needed someone to be there and she was. she was the
only one who was ever there for me; it was unhealthy and
cataclysmic but she was there and that was more than enough
but then my tears started making her happy and my
anxiety gave her strength and I told myself she wasn't a
problem; until I realized I couldn't distinguish who I used
to be before I met her and she still makes her way into my
life at times but I have found calling her by her real name
scares her. it shows her that I know the mask of deception
she wears and that I am no longer afraid. my therapist asked
what I used to call her, before I knew, I said a friend. I know
now who she truly is and the word still tastes like iron in my
mouth. Depression.
Jun 27, 2016
Jun 27, 2016 at 6:35 PM UTC
fourteen.
fourteen and I am alive.
fourteen and yet I feel like I am five
fourteen and my poems still aren't that good
fourteen and my skin still scars just as often
fourteen and I don't talk to my mom as much I used to
fourteen and I still hate my body
fourteen and I still hate my body
fourteen and I never liked celebrating my birthdays
fourteen and I never liked waking up on my birthdays
to a stranger who looks like me and sounds like me
but isn't me because I'm fourteen and that's
supposed to make a difference
fourteen and I feel like I am too young to be writing
about the things I do but my cousin's fourteen and she
does the things I am afraid to write about
fourteen and this is probably the only honest
poem I've ever written in my life
fourteen that's probably why it isn't that good
fourteen and I feel like I'm running out of things to say
fourteen yet there are so many things I haven't said
fourteen and I miss the way people used to love me
fourteen and I feel like it's ****** up that I don't miss the
way I used to love me because fourteen was when I stopped
remembering what that feeling felt like
fourteen and I don't hate school as much as I thought I would
fourteen and there's nobody in my school I'd celebrate my birthday with
fourteen and I haven't talked to someone I love in months
fourteen and I have more regrets than my age
fourteen and I realize that means nothing but it feels like it means everything
fourteen and I used to dream about doing impossible things but
fourteen is the number of dreams I have that died
fourteen and I don't blame the people that have given me love
and then tossed it aside because it's been a year and my tears have dried
fourteen and I have learned my heart is an abandoned garden
that only grows weeds and that planting flowers in it is useless
fourteen and it took me a long time to realize that I am more than just my age
fourteen and I wish I was still five, with my hair curly
and my mother's soft singing the only tune in my mind
but I am fourteen and life is supposed to be better
in ten days when I turn fifteen and
yet I have a feeling everything will be the same
(h.l.)
Jun 18, 2016
Jun 18, 2016 at 4:53 PM UTC
crumpled sheets wrapped around your waist and the
scattered t.v. remote you were looking for falls into a fold
of the blanket you are intertwined within; you can no
longer give yourself the motivation to do anything, not even
move slightly to the right and stretch a little to catch the
tiny battery in your frail and delicate fingers. your overdramatic
and completely unrealistic soap opera will have to wait until
your grandchildren get home and one of them can turn
the t.v. on for you.
(h.l.)
Jun 13, 2016
Jun 13, 2016 at 7:29 PM UTC
They stand tall and smile beautifully,
any gaps between their teeth is held together by
glue called fear of what could happen if they are
anything but perfect. This glue, it is strong and sticky
and unbelievable expensive, it costs both your pride
and your happiness
[but it's okay, because both would've been taken
anyway. This is America you are a girl and you are a
shade of black so dark it blends within the moonlight.
the skinny twig girl in your class will call you a slave and
you will bite back the salty and sour response threatening
to spill from the back of your throat, that she is the color
of cafe con leche left on the porch and dried too long from
the burning sun of the Caribbean sky; and when she and her
white-washed friends laugh you bitterly think, wow there's no
difference between her and every other ****** here.]
They are gorgeous. Lips so red they remind you of blood at
a nurse's office. Stomachs so toned you want to scream that
your color is not a trend, that your milky white and yet charcoal
black skin with small bumps easily mistaken for traffic signs
with how easily their colors change is not a beauty status. your
skin is not pretty. It speaks an oppressed language with eons
of history behind it like your great grandmother's blood that was
shed onto the white man's land after he conquered something so
precious it could never be given back and you carry that with you,
within the stitches of glass cuts you forcefully made onto your
black skin, sickeningly thinking that you weren't good
enough because you aren't them and inside the skeleton
of your body is your grandmother
and she was a warrior in her own right and you carry her within you
and inside it not something middle school girls can laugh at.
it not something bitter old white politicians can mockingly ridicule
and sarcastically apologize for. it is not something that a boy,
years later at a frat party can try and belittle,
as if saying you are pretty for a black girl makes you feel better.
your great grandmother's soul and the woman before her give you
that milky white and charcoal black skin that can only be described
as the sky at midnight, when everyone else in the small town
you live in is asleep but you are awake and it is beautiful.
it is a hurricane with an infinite amount of water,
it is warfare at it's most addicting point and it is cataclysmic,
and they have no right to spray the dark color of the moon
onto their skin and pretend that the sun does not exist
until it is advantageous for them.
They are pretty.
They are beauty.
They are white,
and you with your Dominican kinks and sunburned skin
are not and this is something that now you do not like
but within time you will come to love.
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 8:01 PM UTC