If you can hear me,
If you can see me, or sense me, or
Imagine the taste of sea salt on my skin,
Know that I love you.
Deep and full, warm and soft,
I love you with the span of my hands and
The curve of my spine,
With poems and paintings and a smile
With clean sheets and a bottle of wine,
Come home to me.
Nest yourself in beside my sternum and let my heartbeat sync with yours,
Let my stomach fill with sunburst rainbow butterflies
When you giggle
Let me revel in your voice and bask in the comfort of your fingers laced with mine
It’s not Romeo and Juliet or the moon and the tide, but
I love you like 2 am pillow fights and baking cookies on a rainy afternoon,
I love you like listening to the frogs in the pond
and singing to every song on the radio,
I love you like galaxies colliding and old bookstores,
I love you like dancing on the sidewalk and neither of us can dance to save our lives
So we end up just holding each other and laughing,
Flowers twined in your hair and your legs all tangled up with mine  
And the sky is so so incredible it takes my breath away till I remember your eyes
Because I love you.

The prelude to a bruise
Is the loving gleam in your eyes
Feral glint boiling up from
Wild meadows and forest lingering on the edge of
Forgotten
Conception is the heavy, hot second of contact.
Searing through me with a gasp and
Cry of thanks
Your touch sows the seeds of violets and morning glories
And red, red roses, thorn-***** freckles
Flowers blooming across my back, my thighs, my throat
Grow me up from your sheets, lavender and larkspur wrapping around my ankles,
My ribs a spray of hyacinth, hydrangea flourishing on the crests of my hips,
Wrists encircled in verbena,
Delphiniums blossom on my throat
Planted by your hands, your teeth
Gardens of your admiration remembered on the canvas of my skin

when you bury me, please don't grieve
this is what i wanted
when my hands are cold and my lips blue and expressionless
don't cry,
i've shed enough tears for all of you
don't say it was a waste of a life -
i've lived my time and loved this world and
found joy in your smiles
please, leave me be
it's okay now

pumpkin pie with apple juice
handmade scarves and the way your scent clings to me
poetry, chamomile tea
I sleep while the leaves die

the ghosts of your glances drift through me like snow,
getting tangled like spiderwebs on my ribs
until the ache under my breastbone reminds me
i can't breathe
my lungs are full of your smiles

In my head, she and I were a symphony - red and white
Harmonies sprouting from shoulders rubbing
Hands brushing like strangers on a subway and
Eyes staring too long,
Like looking at the moon when I’ve had too much to drink

I hoped that she would kiss me, so she could read on my lips all the things I
Could not say

But she isn’t really a woman of the kind I can kiss, or so I've been told
Because what’s under her dress doesn’t match the name she introduces herself by
But I want to love her like a woman. Not a confused boy or a ******* or an ‘it’ of the type muttered about by the football team in the cafeteria.

I want to love her like a woman. A woman like my mother or my best friend or Jennifer Lawrence
Like the woman she is.

She asked me to do her makeup and help her find a dress
She had never worn a dress before.
The mirror finally reflected what she felt inside she thanked me for making her
“A real woman.”
It broke my heart, because she was a real woman since…forever.

I try to waken and greet the world once again
Regardless of the soft grey mist
Blanketing my skin.
Made it through another moon shine night.
It’s dawn again and once again it’s dawn,
Drawn bow towards target of
Eyes forgetting darkroom mysteries of dreams
Colors line textures reinvented under deceptively distant
Slivers of lighted cloud.
Dawn again and I marvel at being an extra in a show
Played out a trillion times, trillions of eyes watching
When the curtain opens
It’s dawn again,
Heavy breath sigh,
Purple light on pale skin-
Braille beneath fingers still stumbling in sleep
It’s dawn again and once again it’s dawn.

You’re wondering if I’m lonely.
Okay, then, yes.
I’m lonely
Like a plane full of strangers all with headphones in,
Seen from the ground as a
Fast vanishing light, here and then not

I’m lonely like a woman driving across the country,
Day after day,
Throwing away mile after mile,
Forgetting to drink the coffee she bought in
Towns that she might have stopped in,
Lived and grown old and died in  

Am I lonely?
Sure, the loneliness of walking a city in the early morning in winter
The streetlights stretching your shadows into crowds of acquaintances
Stumbling over each other to whisper their own inane advice

Alone when I wake to a house still asleep and I move too quietly even though
I’m the only one there, afraid to disturb the solitude snoozing in the attic
I drink my tea and watch the cars
Lonely

Midnight on a college campus is lonely
if you stand on the right spot-
The empty sidewalk outside the library.
Not sure if it was the cold or the nerves that
Rattled my spine into goosebumps, but I could feel my
Hands shaking, trying to seize comfort from the silent air.
He was late - I chewed the color from my lips, waiting.
The sound of his car slowing, tires too loud on the cobblestones,
Rung in my ears after we pulled away from he curb.
The streetlights seemed awfully harsh as he drove away with me
But his voice sounded the way lavender smells after a rainstorm,
More gentle than I expected it.
I caught myself wondering if maybe I would be okay.
I don't even know his last name.
I don’t remember the night as a narrative, a story I can
Describe to you in detail,
But as frozen scenes of a movie -
Unattached, flooded with momentary feeling.
His fingers in my hair and this time it was heat
Burning down my spine that made me shiver.
Click of the switch turning out the kitchen lights.
Cool leather of a couch.
My own nervous laughter.
Breath forced from the back of my throat.
Fingerprints on my collarbones.
Hands and mouths and hips.
Safe.
Warm.
The ride home being quiet.
My roommate stared in shock when I walked in at 2:30
Flushed and too embarrassed to speak
I could tell she disapproved but I decided that
I would savor the feeling of myself
I am not ashamed of my body or my choices with it
I am not ashamed of being confident in myself for the first time in 3 years
I am not ashamed of enjoying my life
And if someone wants to call me ****
Then I will be there to accept it
With a smile.

We don’t talk anymore.
Your name is still at the top of my contact list even though we haven’t said
hi in a few months.
Each time I try, the blinking cursor reminds me of when you brought me pecan ice cream
because I broke up with my boyfriend.
I don’t think I ever paid you back like I promised to.

I’m measuring this life in heartbeats and torn atlas pages
and miles of dusty country road,
The space before the inhale of breath
Feels like my lungs are freezing or burning or rotting away

I’ve been pacing through the friendless emptiness of this room for so long that
I think the floor boards are beginning to form fault lines
Over the cracks in my heart
and some nights I miss you with the magnitude of an earthquake.

Can you miss someone who never realized you’d miss them?

I’m digging trenches to outline my ribs because
my chest is more useful as a garden than a graveyard and
I don't want to let your memories be buried here under the
fragments of shattered mirrors you cleaned up in my heart,
Bits of bloodied tissues on your kitchen floor that night I
forgot to love myself because I was too busy
loving the way you laughed behind the velvet curtains

Loneliness is just knowing that the people around me
Won’t hug me when I’m breaking like you did

Your eyes would tear galaxies into my bones, bracing them with
The DNA of a friendship
Your smile haunts my thoughts like a song I’ll never remember
Even long after you’ve forgotten my name,
I don't think I will ever forget you,
Not when I see your face in the strangers on the street and the
ordinary letters of your name

Sometimes people drift out of your life and there is no way that I know
to make the loss of a friend
nostalgic, or poetic, or romantic.
They have their life and I have mine, and I wish it was somehow
closer to their late-night stories and too many drinks under the moon

The worst part is I’m not missing a kiss or brush of hand against your arm
Because we never touched like that,
Just a brushing of souls at the quiet light-speed of understanding.
I cry because the last time I cried like this you brought me pecan ice cream,
And I know that you don’t know that my favorite flavor
Is chocolate now.

I saw a picture on the internet of a sign
That said “Welcome to Amsterdam. When it’s hot, please dress for the body you have,
Not the body you want. Thanks"
In the vicinity was a large woman wearing a pink crop top and leggings and the
Image was captioned
“Look who didn’t follow the rules!”
I assumed this rogue internet commenter assumed that this woman,
This beautiful, curvy, confident woman,
Didn’t want the body she had.
Why is it always assumed that fat people hate their bodies?
I’m fat and this IS the body I want *******!
I love this body!
This body has ******* privilege!
This body has enough melanin to tan easily in summer but not enough
That I’m going to be unjustly persecuted for my skin tone.
This body doesn’t get too cold in the winter.
This body has a home and a family and food to eat!
This body is ABLE to run and jump and walk wherever I want
This body is disease free.
This body can fit into a variety of clothing and look good.
I mean it isn’t perfect -
This body has had an eating disorder.
This body has self harm scars,
This body doesn’t always feel like it’s the right gender
This body has lived through 4 school district changes, a cross country move,
Depression, anxiety, a suicide attempt, high school graduation,
Bullying, finding out that I’m queer, finding out that I’m loved,
My first week of college, 16 days of living on a hiking trail
Thinking I’m ugly and realizing I’m beautiful
But I still want this body!

It’s the only one I have

She is radiant. Like sunshine
Lemon-yellow, summer sky, too-wide smile beaming into my ribs
Newfound confidence burning it's way out of her bones
Boiling over into her laugh.
I love the way her fingers tip-tap on the tabletop,
Skittering away from me, my heart in her hands and
Here I am not caring if she drops it because
Her fingerprints will stay.
I gave her my dress because she didn't have one.
I watched her put it on and
Felt the pang of envy that it never hugged my hips like that
She looked in the mirror and gasped with the realization that she is
Beautiful - her reaction so viscerally alive and moving that
I stared unabashed, in awe at her and blushed when she caught my eye
I told her it was just because I was glad she liked the dress.
And she believed me.

i lost the moon
trying
to count the stars away

she tells me the rain always feels like tears, even on days when the sun breaks through the clouds
her skin, pale with thirst for the light, dusted by the
darkness of escaping into herself,
a bare lightbulb illuminating her skull, shaved and shorn by
razorblades of hope that dissolve into waterfalls of
never being the one they want
never being the one that can break the chains
never being the one
she thinks she should be,
self-medicating with the flood of sobs fermenting in her eyes
blinding her to all but the sharpness of her lonely bed.
my head throbs in time with my heart.
just hold on.
you are not as alone as it feels in these chambers of self-solitude and
breakfasts of self-doubt indicate.
please
stand outside at dawn and let the rose colored light baptize you into a new
love
for this life - fragile sparks running down veins with the abandon of children
neurons pulsing with joy at the feeling of sun-kissed lips and
lake-swept feet and that moment the thunder sounds like a summons
to dance in the rain.
just hold on, to these precious melodies in your hands
to these unbreakable bits of spirit embedded like diamond in your soul
to this gift you have, this incredible ability to smile
and laugh and
grasp my hands between your palms, to sing psalms of baby birds and
rivers at twilight
to stare at the stars and listen to music and scream with pride from the mountaintop of
all the amazement and creation that is you
just hold on.


for me.

i walk down the earth,
barefoot,
feeling the old souls of grasses long
cut to dust
the sunshine like wine against my lips
honey on the skin that still hasn’t forgotten
your fingerprints
the outline of my feet stand tired in the dirt, wandering aimlessly
searching for something to drink to
fill up the gaps in my bones
am i home?
i think the answer is yes, since the sky here is
bluer than your eyes
and the dirt yields to my toes

When I was 7, I thought I was the luckiest person in the world
Because I found two four-leaf clovers on the same day
So I made a wish, to know how my story would end
And this year has shown me that I am god ****** lucky.
Lucky in a second-chance,
Once-in-a-lifetime miracle sort of way
That makes my fingertips tingle every time I think about it
Lucky in a breath-taking, tear-inducing way that makes me hold my friends and family tight behind my closed eyes
Lucky in a not-everyone-is-this-lucky realization
That forces me to line up my blessings on the countertop and count them,
Then count them again.
I am lucky, that when I decided to take myself out of this world
I fell onto the hugs and clasped hands of
People who would move continents
Just so I'd have someplace stable to stand.
I was fortunate that the nurse on suicide watch in my hospital room
Asked me to call her Ellie and let me cry on her shoulder during games of checkers.
I thought it was auspicious that the mental hospital served tapioca pudding that tasted just like my dad's,
Bringing memories of cold nights and warm smiles.
It was even favorable that I threw up before I got to the emergency room
Because the doctor looked me in the eyes and said
"If all that had stayed in your stomach,
You would be...not standing here right now"
It was reassuring that he didn't say the word "dead" to my face.

I am lucky, not only to be here, but
To want to be here, to want to breathe this moment
Because once you've spent time in the darkness
It's hard to come back to the light
Now 7 year old me knows I'm lucky enough
My story will not end in darkness.

Ignore the shattered windows all around you-
Your skin cannot tear open.
Ignore the cracked concrete and broken mirrors -
All your bad luck has already been.

I struggle to find the words for what you mean to me
My soul strains to lift the darkness from your heart
You deserve nothing but light.

Instead of empty, incompetent words, let me give you this:
Warm hugs when you're cold;
Holding your hand when you're scared;
Let me wrap all your fears and follies up in my love and make a stained glass window of your fragile hopes.
Let me give you a golden-coin moon and diamond stars hanging in an indigo velvet night;
Your own words, cracking open my bones and reflecting back my love;
The taste of sea salt in the cool air of dawn;
A cup of tea steaming in a quiet kitchen.


I know this is not enough.
It is all I have to offer you.
It cannot mend your cracked reflection
But I promise-
From where I'm standing
Even the sunlight pales to your beauty
And I swear I can't see anything broken about you.

How the **** do you go from calling me
Baby girl to
*****?
Keep your soft kisses to yourself
Even when the thought of my hips
Let's you whisper in my ear
All the things
You'd love to see.
Stop.
I was yours only as long as
Your smile was wide enough to let me fly
Even cages of gold are still metal enough
To damage the wings of a butterfly.
I made myself vulnerable to you.
You grasped my trust by the neck and
Carelessly let your fingers tighten.
And yet...
I was the problem,
After you forced me to my knees with shame and
Promises that could never be and
The flush in my cheeks when you said how you'd touch me -
I was the one who smothered your heart
When you held your arms over my head so
All I could see was your scars,
And I cried for you
Apparently that makes me abusive,
Telling you to respect my body after I
Let you see the parts of me that inspire
All of my fear and shame
Makes me unstable.
Tell me...how can you go from
Loving my eyes to hating the truth in them
When we stare through the doorway to
A future I shut and locked the window on -
Don't give me the key.

her skin is like the black coffee my mother
drinks
dark-smooth with an electric kick against my taste buds
and her voice is the soft breath of  
early morning rain
drip drip dripping
into a desiccated desert of a heart

Dear you,
I know it's difficult.
I know up think your family dislikes you and
You feel like you have no friends
It's a struggle, I know,
To wake up,
To get up,
To stand up and stare and
Pretend to be interested in the people around you.
I know it hurts when you feel like a
Black-and-white character
In a technicolor Disney world.
I know.
Dear you,
You've had hard nights,
I know
When I say "stay safe"
And all you can reply is "I'll try"
When I beg you "please, live"
And all you can answer is
"but I don't want to"
I know.
I've been there, deep down inside my own heart
Where goodness and blue skies are a million miles away
I know it feels like it will not
Ever
Get better,
Feels like you're choking,
Feeling like the world is melting
I know.
But dear you -
You have made a difference because you made
Me
Feel beautiful.
Curse me, hate me, never speak to me again
But I will never forget that.
If society says you do nothing of value
For the rest if your natural life
You will still be great because you made me
Feel like I was worth something.
I will be seventy, eighty, ninety years old
And I will remember the way you made me
Feel
And I will smile
And know that I'm beautiful
And that makes you worth it all.

I am beautiful.
I am gorgeous and flawless in my presence here.
Right now, I've made it to right here.
Every inch of my heartstrings,
Every ounce of my lifeblood
Is meant to be right here, right now
People say Carpe Diem but I don't need to
Seize an entire day,
Just this moment.
This one.
And this one.
And this one right here.
A perfectly polished present from eternity,
Crafted by the hands of God Himself just for me to
Experience and savor and
Breathe in - the scent of life
Smoke and green grass, honey, lilacs,
Homemade lasagna, his cologne, her shampoo.
I've made it to right here, right now
And every word from my lips is an amen to finish off
The prayer of another sunrise, another day
And every heartbeat is a hallelujah to praise another breath,
Another moment in this body
My skin is a tapestry of remembering,
Rose-pink lines bearing witness, well-worn kaleidoscope
Memories of knowing dark nights and grey, lifeless dawns
And the strong, burning scent of *** in my throat
But it's okay now
Because I will protect me
I have dragged myself from the depths
And it was scary.
And it is hard.
And it will be okay.
I am right here, right now
And this is my moment.
My moment to breathe, to feel,
To live.
To let my razors rust and
Know that the pills have forgotten how to poison me
And I will dance like when I was a child,
Before I knew what shame was
And I will laugh like when I was a baby,
Smaller than my mother's hands
And I will love like I have never known the
Sharp, sad pain of depression inside my skull
Because I am beautiful.
I am somebody's favorite voice and I am somebody's
Helping hand and I am somebody's
Shoulder to cry on and I am
Student, teacher, daughter, friend, helper, lover, woman, person,
Human.
And this is the portrait of a young lady
Who is not afraid to love herself with passion
And rebuild her foundation on rock bottom
Because I made it.
Because I am beautiful.
Because this moment is my amen to living.
Because I am right here, right now.
And so are you.

I hate winter. All my friends tell me it's great,
But they all get to sleep inside when the windchill is 12 below.
I guess I'm technically inside -
The shelter room is drafty and the heat doesn't work very well,
Sputtering and hissing like the alley cats
Behind the building
We don't have nearly enough blankets.
Just once this winter I want to not be
Cold.
Wherever I go out the air seeps through a second hand coat,
Feeling ***** and gray against my skin.
*****, dingy, cold
Basically describes me, my mom, the sidewalks, the weather, the city, my life.
I've only ever celebrated Christmas
With others who have lost their way, their homes.
Never the warm family event I know is right.
All the people at school love Christmas -
Their families all have enough money to buy gifts for them.
My mom asked what I wanted,
And I knew she didn't really want me to answer but I couldn't help it
"A phone-" I blurted out, before I could stop myself.
I almost cried when I saw the look on her face
Defeated, deflated, like someone had
Stripped away all pretenses of
Un-reality
She wanted to get me a new phone, I could see it in her eyes
But I'd also seen the bills this month.
There was no way that was happening.
"Look, Mom, I was just joking.
I don't need anything, the important thing is for the two of us to just be a family."
I forced a smile, seeing the lines around her mouth
Sag with relief.
She didn't know that all the girls at school had new phones
And new clothes
And perfect hair
And high end purses
And cars and Christmas tree and coats.
And they're not cold.
I hate going shopping with my mom
When we get to the checkout counter she has to pull out our food stamps and
Bridge cards and crumpled ones and
Fives to pay for scuffed hand shoes
And ugly sweaters.
I know she's doing the best she can but I always act like
I don't know her.  
Being poor is embarrassing,
A red stain rising to my cheeks that doesn't make me feel any warmer.
I pretend I don't care that the other people in the line
Stare,
Impatiently tapping their feet when
She drops her change
Morse code messages to 'get back to the streets, the shelter, to wherever you came from
What did you do to end up like this?'
You know, I got asked to homecoming this year. But I had to lie and say my dad was really sick and I had to stay home.
I don't even have a dad!
But I knew we didn't have money for the tickets, let alone a dress or boutonnière.
I just want to feel normal for once.
I want to be warm and comfortable
And feel like someone else loves me.
Have some new clothes for once.
New boots, a new hat...
It's okay though, really. I've survived all the winters before this.
It's just so hard, you know? When I know that I'm different, that my family is different.
You might be able to lie to a 7 year old, but I know that being homeless is
Different.
Bad.
Cold.

She smelled like cigarettes
And the way the yellow street lamp sparked bright on her yellow teeth almost made him shudder, keep driving
But he didn't care, he wanted -no, needed
It
Her
Needed to see the back alley dust in the creases of her elbows
Needed to feel the visceral pull of
Skin on skin, fingers twisted in hair
To feel he was alive.
She tasted like cigarettes.
She never was able to kick them
Wanted a pack a day but could only afford
A smoke every 6 hours
Every 6 hours, like clockwork
Stumbling through the back door,
Desperately reaching for a light.
She counted herself lucky that her only vice was smoking
(the ******* the corner opposite had a
nasty coke habit)
Yet he didn't care what she tasted like,
Just that he was tasting her,
Feeling her,
Drugged on the way her eyelashes caught the light and the way her breath
Rasped the slightest bit when he grabbed her hand.
He was a regular, got good treatment
She knew to treat him good, don't complain
Still she couldn't help but feel degraded,
Worthless when her face was pressed to the ground,
Focusing on breathing and trying to shut out
His little gasps and noises as he got what he paid for
Still she couldn't believe where her life had gone,
On her knees, ignore the fact she was
Half an hour late to her smoke break, because she was here making a living.
She can only buy her cigarettes because  
She knows *** sells.

"The best things in life aren't things."
I agree.
Empty space around my ribs is far more
Fulfilling
Than eating dinner.

Kindergarten teaches
"Hands to yourself"
Were you sick that day?
Because you didn't hesitate,
Touching me without consent
I'm violated

I watched the moon divorce the stars, running
slipping away from the pinpricks of
Truth
floating aimlessly in human consciousness. My heart
ached
with sorrow, wishing I could re-pair the moon
to the heavens the way it was
Meant to be.
The disappearance of the lunar landscape from my
blurred vision, hazy with long days and aching feet,
left a hole between my ears
Just like the hole between the stars.
darkness demands to be seen, in its
unseeable
Shadowy force, pushing its way into veins full of
moonshine.

snow is strange to me;
like soul pieces and frozen tears
landing gently in my hair
biting sharply into skin

Stage makeup only looks good from
The distance of an audience,
And thick foundation doesn't erase stress,
Only sleepless nights.

Exhaustion.
body melting into itself, cushioning
reality with hazy unfocus.
i feel fuzzy around the edges,
static buzzing in my ears.

In search of the yet unknown they roam,
Young faces carrying old burdens
They have seen too much.

Man the trenches, takes up arms, pick the nation
Up
Onto your shoulders, for that is what
Soldiers do.
They have seen too much, far beyond tears
His eyes blank, her hands trembling with repressed
Memories of somewhere far away.
He didn't mean to ****, though he meant
To do his duty.
She didn't mean to see the bodies, though she meant
To help her brothers.
No man left behind.
The blood felt sticky as it seeped through his uniform,
Carrying a fallen comrade,
Trying not to think of anything but the steps back to
Safety.

When I played Taps it was cold. November 1, because
The veterans all had work on Tuesday the 11th.
My heart and my salute to America's servicemen and women
Poured through my trumpet with as much
Solemnity and remembrance and love as I could muster.  
24 notes that reminded me of my great-grandfather's flag,
The picture of my father in his dress whites,
Rows and rows and rows of white crosses at Arlington.
I cried, and I wasn't even ashamed of it.

To all who have served our country
To all who have sacrificed of their minds and bodies
To all who have lost lives and limbs and peace of mind to
Protect us
I salute you.

There's nothing worse than seeing a
Stuffed animal by the side of the road.
It always makes me think of the
Tear-stained face and grubby hands who
Accidentally dropped it
So much potential for happiness,
Yet it was just thrown away by chance...
I'll never forget the way my young hands
Rushed to tend to a small tear or dirt smudge on
My favorite fuzzy toy.
A fit of middle-school anger left it in the
Care of a donation box.
I wish more than anything I'd kept it.
I think we underestimate the value of
A permanently smiling hand-full of
Fur and memories.

you know you are in love when
you remember nothing about life
Except
that their fingers fit perfectly to yours

Self-acceptance, love, and peace. Willing to pay any amount.

A life's worth of stress, please claim.
Reward: my thanks.

Insecurities and scars, well worn and in need of love.

She says the best thing I can do is have a
Safe space
A place that is just my own, a
Slot in the world where I fit
Safe and cozy like my favorite book,
Reading it until it fell apart.
The best part of the story was when he (all the characters always the same)
Doesn't give up and finds his forever friends, forever home.
I always wanted a forever home,
A place to be me.
The old She said the best thing I can do is
Stop the negative thought cycle.
Okay, let me flip that switch to off,
You know, I don't pay you to state
The obvious, or tell me impossible things.
I left Her.
The new She says to
Have a plan. Hard to do when your life
Is hurtling in 12 thousand directions,
Brains plastered against skulls and walls from the velocity,
Gasping for breath, panic attacks,
Need sleep, need food, neither look good -
But I digress. She says to stop making excuses
And to stop apologizing,
As if I could not express my sympathy to those
Who have to deal with it.
I'm sorry- sorry - not sorry.
And yet...
Some mornings I wake up and it feels so
Good
To not be who I have become.
I, like a miser, hoard the moments that don't
Hurt so much,
Moments of him, moments of me.
Strange, isn't it?
It aches deep down to be me, but I wouldn't
Be anyone else in the universe
I guess that's just life...
She smiles when I tell Her I'm doing okay
It scares me, like She sees that I'm actually
Drowning
In sorrow, in between my breaths
She says to take lots of walks, and I agree,
For once liking the cold bite of November on my face.
My birthday month is awfully dreary, but She seems
To like this time of year,
She says it is good for cleansing the soul,
Not sure I believe Her
She says to trust Her
Not sure I believe Her....

There is something so wrong
About a crush. An invasion of privacy,
They never asked to be trapped inside
My skull,
Their name rolling silently on my tongue.

when i was a child -
each moment of breathless butterfly dances
brushed down my fingertips like so many
feather-light drops of stardust, twirling leaves were
full of mystery and strange fire-color and too
crackle-crunchy to resist
and the little stick piles were firefly homes, hiding spots of summer evenings,
and each tear on my mother's cheek was a small
wound that my kisses could heal.
when i was a child -
i had dreams bigger than the world. i would
save the animals from extinction, go to the moon, travel the world,
not thinking that growing up would make reality grow
over the tender places in my still soft fragile bones
brittle masks growing over an honest face
tangling upwards like overgrown roses, flowers lost behind the thorns.
i know fairy tales are for kids but -
they stick inside my ribs the way memories sometimes do
glossy, rainbow printed pages, full of magic whispers
teddy bears and small heroes
type too large for
me now, just a children's book. i wish my hands were soft and tiny enough to gently crinkle the pages again.
i wish for a child's eyes again.
if only i could see the dandelions as possibilities, not weeds
and the snow as strange and wonderful instead of
just a pain to drive through
if only, if only -
when i was a child
i imagined i would be a good person
when i was a child if only i could
have seen me now

She writes of the falling days -  
Rumble, tumble, bump down rock slides and
Stutter limbs along cliff edges -
Knows them well, like the back of her
Tiny, fragile hand - too young and too old all at once.
What is there to stop a small girl from
Climbing a mountain to the sun?
oh...
   wait - you could stop her (you did),
with a heart just as stony as her
Mother's diamond wedding ring
You took her and ravaged her mind like
A lover - lacking in love.
How many times have her hands  opened and closed - like
Flower petals, prayer books, lips, legs.
Opened and closed, forever
seeking, searching for another path up the
Mountain.

Even though your funeral was in the summer,
It felt like autumn the way the tears
Hung off Aunt Shelley's jawbone like cold raindrops
On the eaves of the old porch,
The way Grandpa's eyes were too red and wet and
A thousand years away,
The way Dad's sorrow poured out of folded arms and tight lips,
Soft like worn leather,
The way it rained too lightly to add any cliché dreariness.
I just couldn't think of that red granite box as you, even though I
Knew
It was the soft gray remains of your body.
Death is not like winter, cold and harsh
Death is autumn, life draining from bodies,
Life drip-dripping from stuttering lips and
Once-strong grips
Death is watching summers of laughter and hugs fade to
Hospital rooms and rain-grey skin and
Slow sad songs like wind in red-brown, dead-brown leaves
And feeling a slow, quiet loneliness invade your veins.
Your death was not cold, impersonal sterile white; it was the
Aching melancholy melody of removing
One shade of green
From a palette, not noticed in the painting at large
But felt  keenly in the way the artist's hand no longer
Cues that brushstroke.
Watching you die was watching all the green leach out of the leaves
And turn them briefly, painfully on fire,
Standing in a field of emerald grass and feeling it
Crinkle and turn yellow-orchre under cold fingers
Collapsing into mud.
Watching Death from the outside is the single
Most painful part of your painless process.
When you took your last breath, your features were a
Picture-perfect memory of peace, even as my face was a
Mask of confusion, my chest heaving with stale hospital air
The way yours would never again.
I wanted to run outside and imagine all the trees turning red-gold
In your honor, mimicking your final
Blaze of glory in that last smile.
Autumn came early that year, though no trees
Turned
Til October.
Even in the middle of spring I can smell the
Rain-woods-wind-wine scent of your autumn soul
And it makes me smile.

Whoever my future lover is,
Know that I will not like you.
At all.
Never ever never
Ever.
I will never like you.
Like is so bland of a word as to simply disappear in
What will be the splendor of
Shared lives and hearts.
I don't care about the words used
To define our relationship, all
I want is to know you.
I want to share our secrets at 3 am over a crackly phone connection,
When only whispered "I love you"s hold together our
Vulnerable hearts as one.
I want to memorize how your eyes
Crinkle up when you laugh and I need you
To see the way my lips turn down and my eyes go dark when I'm not looking at you
And when my heart goes
Thump-thump-thump in the middle of the night
I want your cool hand on my forehead.
I want us to lay together in a dim hotel room and
Kiss quietly as we shyly reveal our worries and shame to each other.
I need you to be gentle, not because it's my
First time but because I'm not sure I'm ready to be loved and
I need you to find the hope in my skin when you trace my scars and
I want to hold you close and tell you how much you save me.
Let your hands wander and
I will answer your gaze with a mouth parted in an
Itch to fit my lips to yours.
Whisper your moans that I know come from your heart when I send
My soul drifting over your hips.
Let me love you
Let yourself love me
Coupled by shared heartstrings on a summer night, watching the moon.
Whoever my partner is,
I will not like you.
I want to find traces of your heart in your collarbones and
Search out your soul between your ribs and
Kiss you like your lips are the oxygen keeping me alive even as we gasp for air and
We will be each a temple for each other's hands to worship
And we will love deeper than our
Skin pressed together and
We will live fuller than pounding hearts and bodies twined together and
We will love more than the sun and the moon together
Just because we can.

You are a poet.
Spinning inky thoughts into letters and lines,
Books of snowy pages feeling the  pulse in your fingertips
Burning midnight oil to release the boiling soul
Locked behind your lips
You've never cared for rhyming,
Choosing to play to the beat of a drum
No one's ever heard,
And you are a poet
The way your tongue carves the air
Into notes of ancient melody
When you laugh,
The way the heat of your palms
Burns on my skin long after you're gone, the memory of your flesh against mine potent even through
My layers of lies,
The way your whispered secrets
Tangle in the cotton-batting darkness like bats
And creep through the silence
To trickle into my heart
Trying to lift the greyness in my arteries
And replace it with the purple light of your words
You are a poet.
Unfathomable wisdom swirls deep inside your lungs,
Waiting to bloom forth in
Fire fly flowers and nuclear bombshells,
Combustible and burning like a chain reaction as
You awaken minds and hearts.
You are a poet,
Brave and bold and courageous,
Ready to spread your wings and
Scared as hell of the world on your doorstep
Sometimes the waters lap over your head as you
Struggle to breathe the dense airs
Of confusion and insults and city smog
Yet like bubbles rising in champagne
Your speech cannot be contained
You try to condense the whole sky
Into the word blue,
And somehow when you say it
I know exactly what you mean
Because you are a poet
And the song of your throat is no match
For the song of your ageless soul,
Unable to be trapped in the common cages of
Drudgery and 9-to-5 and ordinary-ness
Let yourself go,
Don't be weighed down by small people,
Let yourself fly,
Don't be grounded by small worries,
Let yourself breathe,
Don't be choked by intolerance,
Let yourself live,
Don't let yourself strangle the gift of
Poetry resting in your nerves
You are a poet,
And I  am the breathless reader never able to get my fill
Of your words,
Please fill me to overflowing with your presence,
Please spin your rhythms and stanzas between my ears
Like garden-spider cobwebs bejeweled with dew
Please
Let me revel in the star-bright bits
Of the universe that drop in polished pebbles from
Nervously bitten lips
Please
Let me read and hear and
Know
Your poetry,
For It is the window to a life I've never lived.

Time drips slowly down kitchen walls
Like thick strawberry jam left to cook too long on the stove,
Boiling over.
Silence that isn't really silence reigns the gaps between each whisper of breath and tick of the clock and soft roar of raindrops on the street,
Heavy silence pressing  on my shoulders,
Grey like the clouds, smooth and supple
As bare skin at midnight,
Rich, like good chocolate that leaves a sharp aftertaste.
Kitchen walls, soaked in summer memories, green like summer foliage,
Air trapped in damp and warm confusion inside windows streaked with rain,
Eyes that stare too long before glancing away too quickly.
Watching.
Waiting for two hearts to
Acknowledge
Each other.

But while your eyes cut beautiful
Paper-snowflake patterns into her heart and
Desire burned red-hot holes
Into the fabric of her morals
You hands were twisting in her hair,
Tugging at clothing and pushing delicate skin against the carpet.
Her intimidated silence was never
Consent;
She can't look in the mirror anymore.

Today is a mad day for you too, isn't it?
Don't worry, you're just as crazy as me,
Shhhhhh.
We can't let anyone know that we see it in each other
Your crazy thoughts drift out of the back of your skull like
Candy-colored ribbons all bright and dripping
With their different-ness,
Just like mine.

My heart drowns in the depths of
Hopelessness
When your eyes won't meet mine anymore
Because the blue has turned
Sour,
Summer blueberries rotting under
Sunny skies.

I love summer Sundays,
Cloudy, the threat of rain hanging over the town,
Pressing thick, humid warmth and heavy silence
Down the little side streets and carefully tended gardens.
Up early, sensing the sun starting to climb the backs of the clouds,
Feeling light and life dripping through blue spots in the grey.

I am Christian. I believe in the
Trinity of the Holy God, The Son, and The Spirit,
I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of mankind
I own more than three Bibles
I teach Sunday School every week and
I pray every night.
I am Christian,
And as such I
Hate queer....

Phobia. I can not stand intolerance
And I cry at hatred,
Blood running in the streets,
Fear running in veins,
Running away from the truth.
I am Christian, yet
There are bloodstains in my Bible
And the prayers on my lips
Are for forgiveness for who I am.
The entire story of ***** is
Crossed out, blacked out angrily
In the dead of night
In all 4 versions,
Leviticus is blurred,
Wrinkled with my tears,
Soaked with my pain.
I am Christian
And I am not homophobic.
I know my church won't recognize
Non cis-het marriages,
Leaving entire worlds of rainbows in the dark
The higher-ups insist
Weddings are white, shiny, husband-and-wife, happily-ever-after affairs
That shove me and my friends, my  family, my lovers,
Into closets of heavenly wrath and
Fire and brimstone sermons,
Locked into personal hells of shame
And confusion.
I am Christian
And I am not straight.
My God doesn't hate me for who I love,
He loves me because I try not to hate.
So to the homophobic Christians, I ask:
Who is your God?
Who is your God that supposedly condemns people He has created in his own image?
Your rainbow picket signs are nothing but a cruel mockery of a covenant
Not truly shared by you.
Your tongues are no better than the viper's who called Adam and Eve to sin,
You are the vipers of my world.
Do you think you avoid judgement
When trans teens are killed
By the bullets you spit with your words?
Who is your God,
That tells you to picket the funerals
Of those you hate?
Who is your God,
That refuses to let you open your heart to differentness?
I am Christian,
And I don't need your permission to
Love my God.
Take my scars and tear-stained Bibles,
Listen to my fervent prayers,
Watch my lips tremble when
I listen to my pastor.
I don't need your permission
To love who I want,
In fact I don't want it.
Take my midnight screaming and fear of coming out,
Listen to my frantic pleading for a hand to hold,
Watch my eyes linger on her chest.
I am Christian.
My God doesn't hate me for who I love,
He hates you who refuse to love
While you carry His name, if
Not his blessing.
So I ask again
Who is your God?
Because mine loves all of me,
All 5'6" of queer pride.
Who is your God?