An icy drip, blood colder than the subzero gusts
keeping you away and the noise in
knowing my life would spill out faster and farther
than when we sled down the hill that night

And I curled up underneath your sleek black coat
like the scared child I am
shaking withdrawals of hope

So it took me twelve months,
fifty-something weeks,
to understand that someone you want to sleep with
isn't the same as someone you want to wake up beside

You've said it yourself that you enjoy waking with me
taking the smallest sliver of your bed
(and if I take more, I'll hear about it come sun rise
and our laughter will chime)
Not only am I yours, but you are mine.

The boy who clicks off the light, reads on the couch, to let sleep consume me-- or who reads beside me, metal-frames dipping low
while his eyes pour over the page.

The boy who tucks me in, acquiescing the blanket softer than peach fuzz-- like the ambrosial peaches his grandmother gifted him in the winter and he shared sweet.

The boy who always makes sure to kiss me good-bye
and fills the room with jazzy notes-- because they represent me,
though he never liked jazz much at all before.

The boy who asked me to wake him if I go somewhere because he'd prefer me to remain beside him, but he understands I have things I need to do, so he cannot always wake beside me,
a weight he can handle.

It does not match the boy who told me he does not love me,
though he likes me, and I am haunted by hollow translations
that force me to delicately dance around a swear word in the
English language like "love".

It does not match the boy who said we wouldn't have much of a relationship without ***, and I am haunted by uncertainties of my convenience that force me to stumble with the hope that our
past does not define our present.

How I feel about you, through my actions, through my words, are truer than any logic, but that might not matter
because the boy does not want to hear words that have
a weight greater than he can handle.

I can't fall asleep on the couch this year
eyes out of focus on our tree bursting with history
but only the parts appropriate for them to perceive as reality
the silver beads glow golden draped across every branch

How can I miss an unreturnable place that was never a home
Here or there, lonesomeness would not ease, but because I don't
want to brace this Chicago winter alone, deep blue that passes for deep green cloaks across my ribs still aching with every breath

It seems a silly, foolish thing: obscure
abstracted expectations heeded sure.
However, comfort found or shred in thread,
defiance! Liberation for the dead
to overthrow, reject, deny decrees
imposed from fears that freedom means disease.
Because it chokes, barbed-wire laceration
began with shouts of divine damnation,
outpours a strangled, blood-laced river with
no end—laws unaware of gender’s myth.

To them, I am a thing one can acquire.
Behind eyes worn,  I tire— Oh! How I tire
of worth and value foisted most unjust.
Disgust conceals (reveals) clandestine lust;
they loved (and also often hated) me
for what I am and what I never will be.

I marveled at the stitches
Held your hand, grip tight like the taut strings carefully unraveled
Clockwork, I tended to the wounds
paler lit just by the moon
Heartwork, I kissed the scars

I numbly focus on the void
Unaided and desensitized to the ceaseless ache
Clockwork, you neglect me till I anticipate I will break
a hollow space carved into my chest darkens day by day
Heartwork, you actively exhibit my unimportance to you

I marveled at the stitches
Silk securing skin, uncertainty in the cell structure’s very safety
Clockwork, you asked for me to tend to the wounds
paler lit just by the moon
Heartwork, you smiled when I kissed the scars

What does it matter if I chose to wear a ring
Silver and cold-blooded, fought hard to receive
To symbolize the one coiled around my heart

If I chose to order a drink
Of the poem you recite with smile and splendor
To symbolize you, miles away, my new year’s wish

If I chose to remain in your bed that morning
After your insensitive and heart-constricting decision
to symbolize a commitment to communication and forgiveness

If I chose to lock eyes and arms with you
In a hall teeming with energy contradictory to the average age
To symbolize overwriting painful past through contraband

What does it matter that I chose you
Implicitly and explicitly and wholly
if you didn’t choose me?

No one understands the shortcomings of words better than I
Their irrevocable price of tongue and heart
Fragments of phrases slip through my futile fingers
Grasping at the threads tangled across languages

Intricate perplexing aggravating
As a shoelace-knot of a sentence
Shallow entangling ensnaring
As a spiderweb of speech

Impaired by the limitations of expression
Further subjected to inequivalence in hollow translations
Rendering me to scrawl in desperate-blue
ink words reminiscent of my love for you.

I was going to compose a parallel poem
mirroring the ways you show you care
but you have made it evident
that I will never be your home.

You would
thoughtfully answer my never-ending stream of questions
carry me to bed with a blissful blanket of sleep and softness
grant me the honor of wearing anything you owned, and smile at my choices
actively correspond with me, more in the span of a few weeks than your standard for a lifetime
trust me to take care of your bright-green banana-of-a-boy
assist and twist and crack my spine further
track and plot my heartrate to find a trend in tempo and tone
and always provide the nearness I need to breathe
and feel
and be
myself.

I did not need to pen a poem
to know that you care, albeit reticent
but you have made it evident
that I will never be your home.

If a boy falls in love with a boy
and no one is around to hear it
does the boy really love at all?

But once the sound carries
and electrical pulses transfer
encoded messages are decrypted
and interpretation can never be taken back

But reign in the words
and clutch them tightly to your chest
and bite your tongue lest they escape
and interpretation can never be taken back

If a boy falls in love with a boy
and he does not want to hear it
was there ever any love at all?

Is it that I crave
an understanding of self
amidst a turmoil of state
or is it that I'm a coward
always running from
crying out for
justifying
what I
always
knew
to be
true.

I would
eat the squishy grapes for you
warm your cold hands
share with you the last of my rice and beans
massage your stiff neck
get up from comfort to pour you a glass of cool water
assist and twist and crack your spine further
treat you to your favorite ramen, donating my extra noodles
tiptoe across the creaky floorboards to not stir you
and always give you the space you need to breathe
and feel
and be
yourself.

There feels like there are wasps in my chest,
Piercing the skin from within,
But that pain is better to focus on than
The desire to drag metal across skin
And stain my sheets red, too.

Only one question remains:
Will I pick up the razor-sharp, fractured pieces
And craft a novelty anew?

No human enters this Earth born to serve,
to slave, to suffer, to scramble desperately
away from fire, from threats that mutated
all too rapidly into a guarantee coupled with existence.

No human enters this Earth born to survive,
to brave, to withstand, to endure grievously
through oxygen-starved blood, blockaded lungs
wrapped in wine bruises concealed from all.

No human enters this Earth born to be subservient,
to be exploited, to be depleted, to be drained relentlessly
until heart and eyes and chest become an aching hollow
and there is nothing left for the parasites to devour.

I look in the mirror
To see a young boy
Masquerading
Typecasted into roles with
Skin-crawling costume design
Constricting and waist-binding
The seams searing the skin
Molded to meet the suffocating criteria
There is sorrow deep in his eyes
Knowing he has deceived and deluded
And performed this scene for far too long
Acting restlessly in a futile effort to belong
But he was never meant for this role
The blinding stagelights and heavy curtain
Even if he will miss the roses and applause
He wants nothing more than freedom.

Look at me,
Look at my smile that dances in the natural light.

Rain poured all night until sky revealed a chilled morning
notably warmer than winter's frost- jacket weather at most.
The sun rose ever higher, blinding white and warming
land, locals, and floaters alike, long frozen to the bone.
The smell of grass' rapid rush to shape light to energy fuses
with the air still heavy and thick with the weight of the lake.
Yet, evening spirals in orange to pink to purple until towering
shadows overhang, plunging the streets into early midnight.
Relentlessly the concrete canopy floods every surface, hail batters,
bass rumbles follow with illumination of unadulterated power.

It unmistakably feels like a home renounced to a deceived body,
with it rears fears of past: confinement, subjugation, mistreatment,
but it is not home.

I am home now. It doesn't matter who that upsets.

A brain chemically imbalanced.

How could taking two little white pills every morning
slowly but surely resolve eight years of major depression
ameliorate symptoms that strangle the mind and spirit,
destroying self-worth, competency, basic functionality.

Despite a set-back of a month of unstable, barely restrained
suicidal thoughts, whole-heartedly consuming every minute
of conscious thought and shattering already severely fragmented
sleep, the only repose from the onslaught of endless thoughts
each one affirming deservance and supplying means to an end.

The vile depression, mind-warping, heart-marring, shape-shifting,
perspective-rearranging, adapting to every new environment,
clawing its nightmare-grip further into my chest day after day,
haunting me even in its remission: the depression was sinister.

Body and brain scarred and healing, starved synapses react,
a regiment of medicine, taxing-thought, and long-scarce love,
but indisputably vital: taking two little white pills every morning
slowly but surely resolves eight years of major depression.

A brain chemically balanced.

Sunlight streaks in, gold and sharp,
One blanket is tossed to the floor,
The other is wrapped around you, tangled in your legs.

You stretch beyond the scope of the bed,
Disorientedly breathe the early morning in,
And cover me with blanket seized in your sleep.

I am draped, like royalty, only in the finest,
Your arm adorns and grounds me.
I understand your appreciation for weighted blankets.

My mind cannot wander or worry or plot my demise in your arms.

One hundred and three stories above a city
With jagged edges and winds that cut

With accidents that spill blood,
Fires that deafen,
Viruses that debilitate and exhaust,
Dread overflows from the hearts and hands of the people who love their city, their home

Distress enkindles compassion, defensiveness,
attentiveness until help arrives,
independence in those who know the responsibility of survival's continuum befalls on them,
necessitating community protect community,
beyond sleep-deprived eyes and peace-starved lungs

One hundred and three stories and counting of lives that cross and coalesce above a city
With jagged edges and winds that cut
With people who stand and shield one another from the piercing wind
Expecting nothing in return

“Why are you still here?”

The train still reverberates across rusty rails,
On schedule but abandoned, resounding far throughout the city,
Just as the streets are empty and surveilled,
The people sick with fear and fear of sickness.

“Why are you still here?”

There is nowhere to run in a pandemic,
No space safe for a burden as I,
One who protected themselves by escaping,
Vacancy in the cityscape no longer offering sanctuary.

“Why are you still here?”

I don’t have a home to return to,
I don’t have a family that will love me,
Though I am not the first nor the last to be lost,
Transient strays, surpassing the maladies of blood, build chosen families.

Identity carefully crafted
Balanced and grasped tightly
To create a semblance of order and hope
Survival amidst unpredictability and abuse

Foundational roots providing the only stability
To a mentally-ill mind
To a future controlled and confined
To an appearance irreconcilable to the heart

Seeking independence, freedom from fear
Authenticity and clarity, all beginning to sprout
But the ground splits beneath, shattering into indistinguishability
An upheaval of all that was ever thought clear

Loss and uncertainty entwine the brokenness
Tears nourish the irreversible aftermath
Fear of permanent incapacitation pervades
But life persists and begins to grow anew.

I have never seen the dawn,
Daylight breaking over the boundary between dark and light,
Though I know that with it comes
A crispness of the air
A hushed silence across the world
A sense of awe
A hope for an uprising of humanness
As the light shatters the anguish of yesterday.

I have never seen the dawn,
But I have seen you sleep soundly
In the dimmest of hues and the brightest of rays
Yet you always shine the most brilliantly
The cool air kisses you sweetly
The battle-scarred child nature sings you lullabies
The interwoven-vines protect you
And the sun and moon are humbled by your grace.

I have never seen the dawn,
But I have seen you sleep soundly,
And through you I know what the dawn brings.

You grace me with
lightness, bright mornings, cool breezes,
darkness, soft notes, flickering candle flames,
warmth from gentle sun's rays, highlighting text,
and the curve of your spine as you stretch across the sheets.

I have never known peace like this.
This is as true as my heart beating double-time to yours.

I spill words of trauma and loneliness,
of fear, and hate, and years of bottled
up bruises.
I know the stories I convey hurt you,
leave you speechless and unsure how to console me,
But I have never felt safe enough
To flood the world with these confessions
Before I met you.

Your palms apply pressure,
reassurance from an outstretched hand
to a simple ruffle of my hair,
and the empathy runs over from your eyes,
unable to fathom
a child taught respect by fire, threatened with severe burns to be molded, controlled, manipulated,
a child taught their worthlessness by begging for forgiveness,
rejected pleas leaving tear-stained innocence,
imprinting guilt far below just the superficial skin,
You ache for this pain of mine to dull and fade,
translated through the embrace of me into your time and space, mind and body.

I have never known love like this.
This is as true as your heart beating half-time to mine,
So why can't I tell you that I love you?

I write you love poems
Because I need to shape the tumultuous feelings
That occupy my heart and head
At all hours of dawn and day.
The words beg to spill out.

If I had my way,
I would craft words that sway
your heart and mind to think of
me
as consumed in thought as I am of
you.

Two day ago in therapy I wrote you a love poem:
A physics equation quantifying the emotional clarity that is brought by your proximity,
With love as a fundamental constant and a scalar summation of circumstances' mental momentum.

The next evening,
You told me you were going to sleep with a friend,
But the thought of sharing you makes me viscerally sick,
But worse is the ache, the knowledge
That you crave their touch too.

It's a slither underneath my ribs,
Tensing pressure that constricts my lungs and crushes the bone,
Venom through my veins,
Stopping at my heart.

But,
Love is constant,
Love is kind.
And, god, I've fallen in love with a selfish serpent.

I never take my tea bag out of the cup,
a conscious act of defiance and empathy for leaves with no belonging,
until it becomes face-twistingly bitter.

Sunlight hasn't woken yet, but we have.
There's steaming tea, ink-covered notes, soft keyboard taps,
delicate thread stitching together an all-consuming comfort.
Even the wood knows to creak in hushed tones.

I never take my tea bag out of the cup,
but one of you has taken to removing it when I'm not looking,
sparing me with kind eyes and kinder hands.

Before the floor creaks and groans,
Before either of us wake with a smile or a sigh,
(Before it's too bright for you to say "I need to buy some curtains!")
It rushes by, whipping the wind,
In an explosive noise against rails older than us,
But I am not sure if the sound arises
From it slicing through the air, or
From it forcing a new pattern of breath in the wake of its motion.

But,
Before the floor creaks and groans,
Before you wake with a smile or a sigh,
Before it's too bright, too chilly, or too late- no, just right
I rest my head against your chest
And I can hear the tracks
The gentle thrum and hum and shake,
Beating at a constant rate.

I am breathless with gratitude that I caught this train on time.