Teary kisses cover
Cold white lips
Life now gone forever

The world is flat, a calendar picture,
Picture-perfect,
Afraid of being crumpled by the hand of a God and
Used to shoot trash can-basketball baskets
In a small, lonely bedroom where the only one keeping score is the
Parakeet statue perched on the broken clock, staring.
It's always 2 o'clock.  
2 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon in early November when
The whole world looks like it wants to curl up and cry  
So I curl up and cry for it,
13.6 billion years of tears dripping from green eyes
And a green heart meant for growing flowers and love songs,
Not crow calls and dreams that die in infancy
I float.
Salt water tears lapping around inside my ears
Maybe it will cover up the sound of screaming inside my bones
And the pretty girl swimming in my heart-lake
Laughing and stirring up the cold undertow of my thoughts and when I look at the sky
I see the cloud shadows against the blue,
Blue just a little too dark, little too deep,
Too deep, too dark,
The water beneath me too deep, too dark
I'm drowning and I haven't even left my bed
I wonder if that counts as talent.
Is this what it feels like to go mad?
2 o'clock my hands aren't attached to my body anymore,
They can't be part of me when they dance
Across desk tops looking for scissors and rummage through bathroom drawers to find razors.
That's not my blood in the sink,
It can't be because all my blood is locked up
Inside the red haze behind my anger,
Caught in sharp words like fish in a net,
Not my words but yet they fall from my mouth.
My room contains my screams
As they drip silently from teeth made crooked by too many lies.
The parakeet stares.
It's 2 o'clock but I don't know if it's a new day yet because the sky always looks dark
Outside my windows
So I shut my eyes and don't open the curtains.  
The world is collapsing,
The hands of God pulling down the picture,
Time's up, new calendar page,
I'm left behind,
Lost in the trash can pile of old words
And whispered thoughts.
The sky is too blue,
The water too deep,
I'm drowning.
It's 2 o'clock.

A bad day when her hair
Blew in the wind and he
Caught
Her, she too naive to see
His biting teeth, hard angles,
Sharp elbows and knees
Why didn't she run to the safety
Of soft bosoms and the swell of a hip
Like an ocean wave.

Nothing quite so exquisitely painful
As watching the one you
(Maybe)
Love gaze at a man far better than
Any woman you could hope to be.
Your heart wrenched with
Possibilities scattered to the spring wind
Like a thousand seeds of hope-sorrow.
He's better than you. She's better than you,
How could you ever hope to lure her from
A better man than any woman you could
Ever hope to be.
Golden-honey curls that will never
Wrap around my fingers are spread over
Notebooks full of love poems
To a man far better than
Any woman I could hope to be.

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.

Kiss each autumnal day;
Savor it.
Feel it's cold raw breath on your chapped lips,
It's windy embrace tangling your hair and
Twining around your fingers,
Begging you to stay and twirl and dance
In a field of dying grass;
Taste it, like ginger and peppermint tea
Left sitting on the edge of the worn wooden steps
Overnight, gathering the taste of frost and moist earth
And the peculiar scent of red-yellow leaves
With their brown edges rotting away into nothing;
Sense it, like the geese and the blackbirds
Just know to be carried away to warmer air,
Like the small animals just know that it's time
To stay deep underground, buried beneath the
Soft white blankets of snow;
See it in the skeleton branches and
Damp yellowish grass and iron grey clouds,
Watch the trees drop their leaves
And the crows sit like silhouettes in the tops of the oaks;
Hear it in the soft breezes and cold, whistling winds and
Dry, rustling grass and shrill birds, trying to find warmth;
And taste and smell and feel and hear and sense and savor
The grey-silver rain that drops from the heavy-bellied,
Purple bruised clouds and breaks against your chilled skin
And dews in sparkling diamonds on your eyelashes
And slips between trembling lips and
Runs in streams and rivulets down your spine and into the
Hollow of your neck and across your wrists and in
Little waterfalls from your fingers and chin and nose
As it washes away the stains and scars of life
And rinses your mind clear and focused and
You open your eyes and through the
Blurry sheets of rain, the street lights are dimmed and
The ground glistens and the only sound is the
Drumming of raindrops and the
Thrumming of life in your soul.

I hold hands with my boyfriend
As we walk - no - dance
Down the tiled halls of the purgatory called high school
But I'm not listening to his voice,
Not thinking of him,
Not his smile,
Not his eyes,
Not his hands skimming my skin,
Not even kneeling on his bedroom floor,
Being his *****, somehow
Reveling
In tongue and *** and moaning,
His hand on the back of my head.
I think not of his **** or
Anything it stands for - no - my fancies
Wander over the girl next to me,
My lust dripping like honey over her
Slender shoulders,
Collarbones,
Flowing over the gentle swell of her *******,
Around her supple waist,
Smooth hips and perfect *** unknowingly enticing me,
Seduction even more potent for being
My own secret knowledge.
My heart tumbles over dark precipices,
Falling from one side to another
Men - no - women - no - men - no - women
Women - no - men - no - women - no - men
An eternity of labyrinthine puzzles,
Guilty glances and
Late-night imaginings in shameful ecstasy
Before an answer settles like a
Stone that stirs up a muddy pool before clearing into crystal.
Both.
Not men - no - women,
But men - and - women.
And I will stand proud,
My dress and her skirt swishing softly as we walk,
My hand and his hand, together, as we talk.

My room is quiet
Blue curtains block out the world that lurks just outside
Waiting to hurt me.
8 pm.
I know that purple dusk is gathering outside my walls
The same way the bruises in my heart threaten to eclipse the sun.
I'm scared.
I don't look at the veins showing under my skin because they
Remind me too much of the indigo, under-oxygenated blood
That spills too often from my arms,
Reminds me of my father's face purple with rage
When I told him I didn't think I was supposed to be
In this body, wear these clothes, be this gender.
9pm. Navy skies peppered with stars I will not see again
Purple pen writing apologies to my parents
Heart pumping indigo, under-oxygenated blood too fast,
Knows it doesn't have much time,
Can't breathe, face purple, face blue,
Can't breathe, dark vision, indigo stars,
Can't breathe.

Breathe in-2-3, out-2-3
Your eyes snap open
Sweat beads your forehead
You feel the cold circle
Of a gun against your temple.

Breathe in-2-3, out-2-3
Your eyes squeeze close
Your finger tightens on the trigger
Will you be strong enough?
But then you stop.

Breathe in-2-3, out-2-3
Your eyes open in wonder
Your shoulders slump
The gun lays forgotton on the table
A warm hand covers yours.

Breathe in-2-3, out-2-3
Your eyes close slowly
Your lips touch
Warmth surrounds you
The world is comforting again.

It's raining.
Soft, cool knees hunched up against your chest,
Sitting there in a flowing skirt and knitted vest,
Quiet, at rest,
But you looked distressed, you look depressed,
Your momma knows your house is gonna get repossessed
Cigarette against your lips, unlit.
You look surprised the bus driver doesn't make you
Put it away,
But I pretend I can't see you
Watching night turn to day, your dismay on display
Hiding like a stray dog from memories of your mother's new fiancé
Last Father's Day when you tried to run away.
Well, now you're trying again.
You look weary, bone-tired and thinking about
All you admired, desired, dreams that
Expired and retired and why can't you see all the love
You've inspired?
I want to talk to you, walk with you,
Your skin is too pale, like chalk
I don't want your momma to hear that knock,
Empty face crumpling in shock,
People flock around you where you hit the rock,
The clock ran out for you.
Young ******* the ***** floor, feel like
No one adores you,
Feel hurt down to the core,
I tell you "This is your stop,"
You walk out the door.
I know I'm never gonna see you any more.
And next week, the weather's bleak,
I'm on break, I see your face on the newspaper,
Went to seek Death's mystique.
Raindrops sting like vipers, snipers,
I get back on the bus,
Turn on the windshield wipers.
It's raining.

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

My heart curdles, blackened
By cruel whispers. I try to be me, but
I clipped my wings years ago;
No hope of vibrant feathers
Re-emerging from raw and bloodied skin.
But you! My fluttering hope, how I
Wish
I could keep you in a cage of
Tarnished silver in my chest,
Your gossamer wings pinned to my
Struggling heart.

I open my ribs, cold air breathing on
My gasping lungs, feeble heart
And I give you back your rainbow feathers
For without them you pine and crumble.
Wrench open the delicate silver gate
And be free, your healed wings yanking
Ribbons of red from my love.

Some days my lips feel cold and my ears
Hear none of what I say
Only a faint buzz of wings rustling in the wind.
Some days my fingertips feel blue,
Even though the blood is warm and
My knees chatter in the brisk wind
Even inside my head.
Some days I face the flames of the spiteful dragon in my soul and
His fire doesn't singe me,
A frozen statue.
I am a spirit, a single tarnished coin in the dragon's hoard,
A point of light drifting
In a body too big; I rattle around in my skull,
My skull that is too hard
I bruise and scrape.
Little red and purple-black marks, definitely injured
But a pale finger pressed to them elicits
No response.
Nothing.
I am devoid of feeling, my heart beating but
No pulse,
No life.
The dragon stands outside his den but
Makes no move to attack.
My bones are stuck in flesh
Too heavy, waxy and cold
I want to fly!
My joints stretch through in hard angles,
Translucent skin showing blue veins;
River-tracks of spent blood,
Cold blood,
Carried back to a fluttering heart.
Chilled.
Cold-blooded, a giant lizard seeking it's warmth from other sources.
A shudder twitches between ribs, lungs
Too tight, gasping beneath the
Skeletal, crooked spine running like dragon's spikes
Down past my hips,
Bumps that will maybe become wings
Some day,
Wings that will lift me up
Some day,
Lifting that will become floating
Some day,
And then broken branches will drop from
Cold trees
Fire boiling in my gut,
Waxy skin melting from trapped bones,
A skull too hard,
Flesh too heavy,
Lungs too tight,
Crunch, break, destroy
And my little soul of light will
Float away and be
Free!
If only I had a dragon's courage.

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.

His wrists are my favorite part of his body,
Bones pressing delicately through pale, unscarred skin in a way mine haven't since the 6th grade.
The only bones showing on my body are my elbows and knees, just barely
And the worried bones of my insecurities.
I wish I could see my shoulder blades and hipbones.
I'd never hoped to be a skeleton but
I'd hoped to be proud of my appearance.
Even though my best friend tells me that I'm pretty just the way I am,
I know I'm not as pretty as my sister;
We're twins but no one ever believes us
She has gorgeous blonde hair and pale skin and sky blue eyes,
Hourglass shape.
I think she got the looks, but I always hope I got the brains.
Today I don't know which is the better end of the deal.
I know I am fat. I don't need any doctors or parents or bullies to tell me that
My curves are not big-*****,
Obesity doesn't run in my family,
No one runs in my family,
And by no one I mean me.
My every outfit is prefaced by compression shorts and slimming colors and self-conscious shame.
My stomach has ugly purple stretch marks like tongues of hungry fire
Burning away my self-esteem
Summer evenings aren't fun anymore
When my father tells me I'm too big to swing on the swing set
And my mother asks if I'm pregnant.
I'm not.
I'm a size 14. My mother thinks I'm a size 10.
When I try on the too-small clothes she brings home  
I cry in the privacy of my bedroom mirror,
Oceans of salted pain worry over my face,
Try to rinse away the guilt.
At least I'm not an ugly crier.

Dancers twirl
Through broken glass,
Blood in ribbons
On the grass.
False laughter fills
The air with smiles,
A collection of fake happiness
For a short and precious while.
Appluad the graceless efforts
Of the sinning ballerinas
As the crowd cackles
Like the call of a hyena.

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 have to understand
I don't do this for me.
I don't do this for you or
Even for us.
I do this because I have to,
Because if I don't write and dream
And scheme and sit by
Clear rivers and streams putting words into spiral-bound notebooks,
I will die.
Don't worry, I'll still be around
Walking and talking
But my soul cannot, will not stand being a dusty attic of
Odds and under-appreciated ends,
A broken menagerie of witless thoughts
Not able to fly with only one wing
I need these words to live.
I need half-full notebooks and stanzas and
Scraps of rhythm and rhymes;
My blood runs inky black,
Full of midnight prowlings and
Pens on paper,
Pen, paper,
Pen glides on paper,
As smooth as black ribbons
Draped across the snow,
Black thread
Stitching up white silk.
The lines of words
Imprint themselves into my brain.
I breathe language,
Feel my heart beat with songs,
Dream in the rythm
Of poetry.
Eventually, the
Ink
Forces its way into my veins,
Carried throughout my body
So that I bleed
Ebony rain.
It infiltrates me
Until I am crying
Midnight tears.
My hearts pumps the
Unformed phrases around and
Around again
Until I dissolve,
Becoming a mirror of darkness
On the floor
To inspire another writer.
'Tis the fate of the poet:
To become one
With one's work
And dreams
And life
And soul.

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.

He stood on her doorstep, hopes and dreams in his
Wrinkled hands,
Longing for some peace,
If only he could help her understand
He's not a bad man
Whatever words her momma told her
About her deadbeat dad, they're not true
He was just lonely and sad.
He's old now
Almost time for him to die
But he's not gonna leave until the truth in
His eyes
Reaches her heart, makes her see
"I just want a friendship,
You and me,"
Words tumbling from stuttering lips
She stands and stares,
Her baby on her hip,
Here was her daddy, left only as
Foggy memory,
On her doorstep, begging for
Another chance,
She closed the door on that
Sad and lonely man,
His hopes and dreams now broken,
Dead in wrinkled hands.

I have a love/hate relationship with morning,
And not for the reason you might think;
No, I have no problem with alarm clocks
Or early jobs, cold breakfasts,
Or the grogginess only cleared by a cup (or three) of coffee.
No, I have a problem with literally waking up.
On days I wake up without an alarm clock,
I hate it. Well, hate is too strong a word;
Really, it's bittersweet.
I swim up towards consciousness
From the warm depths of sleep.
I float on the strange, ever shifting barrier of
The dreamworld,
A silver sea rippling with black and white reflections,
Hints of rainbow.
My brain is trying to tell me something,
I'm sure of it, if only I could
See the message for a bit longer.
There is one moment,
One single, tiny, brief, glorious
Moment
Where I know that I'm dreaming.
My dream-self is warm and fuzzy and
Right in the midst of an imaginary...something,
And I know that this instant is all I have left of it.
I strain, focusing all of my real-or-not energy
On decoding whatever it is that I can't quite see.
I revel in the mysterious firing of synapses deep down
Within my brain, forcing pictures of
Life
Onto eyelids that have never seen
The bright-hued portraits
I hang before them.
And I won't be able to think about it
Until that last, final instant,
I try to keep it with me like water in a seive,
But I cannot stop myself from floating up,
Out of Dreamworld, off the surface of the pool,
Away from, from..from....
It's gone.
I can't picture it anymore as I am
Inexorably dragged up towards my life.
I wake, eyes flashing open.
Heart pounding.
Out of breath from my struggle to
See the other side.
A tear escapes from the prison of lashes.
****. I was so close this time...

Silence.
Silence - raw, serene,
Loud silence that
Crushes eardrums and fingertips,
Sinking into creases in dry, cracked skin,
Collecting like silver-black rain
In drops on red lips, ebony eyelashes.
Silence - green and young,
Fresh and completed,
Bending around waists and ankles
Swishing smoothly through gold-brown hair
The color of ripe wheat waving mutely in a
Prairie breeze.
Silence - huge and dark,
Clinging like shadows to necks and ribs,
Tying the moon hand and foot
So her pale lips won't move,
Stillness reigning in the hearts of the maidens,
Corners hiding hushed scurryings
Of the night.
Silence - weird, wonderful
Creating fields of green rivers that
Noiselessly laugh, bubble quickly off to Dreamland
Leaving a world of weighted mirrors
That are filled with God's reflection,
Whispering words I cannot hear in
A perfect world of
Silence.

The master of emotion,
The king of the dance,
Hurried fingers add
A note of daring chance.

Molten happiness
Floats in the air
Like a passing good dream;
With never a care.

Now poignant,
Now sad,
How melencholy
How deep and drab.

Silver metal gleams
In the eye of the mind,
Lost an ancient battles
On which the sun shined.

Melodies curl around inside,
Twining round my arms-
This music can protect me
From any kind of harm.

Sharp, shrieking voices
Let out a scream
As they find out the world
Is not what it seems.

A starry night captures
A beautiful song
For a love through the ages,
The ages so long.

The smooth rythms
Of the everlasting trees
Whisper quietly
Throughout the leaves.

Musty notes
In a darkened room,
And sunshine floods
Into the gloom.

Music tells the truth
And the truth never lies,
But pianos are tricky
And their feelings they hide.

Anger forces the
Furious beats
Into the world
And off silent sheets.

Midnight and brightness
Float in the stars,
Connecting all people,
So close and so far.

Pure and simple,
Liquid notes
Fall in arpeggio scales
Through dancing dust motes.

A single tears falls,
Making no sound
As keys pull memories
Up from the ground.

Everything's so simple
When played in black and white;
The piano controls
My darkness and light.

The dusty old notes
Twirl 'round the room,
Bringing false sunshine
Into the gloom.
Memories form
In the back of the mind,
Laughter and smiles
From an earlier time.
A teardrop falls,
Making no sound,
On white keys turned yellow
And black keys turned brown.
Nothing is left
Except for the pain,
And as that gives way
Only nothing remains.

My mind roams through a wilderness
Of imagination,
Only to reach a wrought-iron wall
At my lips.
The filters of polite society won't let me
Speak,
Won't let me scream "*******!"
To their soft-mannered prejudices
That gather in the bottom of glasses of
Expensive champagne.

If only you could read minds,
Then I wouldn't have to carve my love
On the air between my lips,
Droplets of secrecy and blush that,
Once gone,
Can't ever come back.

You're alone. Well. You feel alone.
That's ok, but let me tell you why you are wrong.
I don't care about how you present yourself or what you wear or
How normal or different or quiet or wise or whatever you are.

I care about you. Just you.
I don't worry about whether you'll hurt me or whether
Sometimes
Things won't go the way we want,
Because I know eventually both will happen.
And sometimes, being a person and being a friend ******* ***** and you gotta just deal with it.

But what you see as your facade of bravado
I see as the mask of someone who needs help.
It's the little things, like the way you frown when you think no one is looking,
The way the scars on your upper arms have almost, but not quite, faded,
The way your anger is carried in shoulders too square, too tense,
The way your silence speaks volumes of confusion,
The way you look concerned for me and not yourself.
You are you.
You need to do what you need to do,
And sometimes that means letting other people (yes, even friends)
Deal with their own ****.
I appreciate the way you hold my hand when I'm crying,
The way you don't seem afraid, but...!
You ain't perfect, and I don't care.
I see that you're flawed and I love it.
I love who you are, and nothing is going to change that.

You're not alone. This is a planet of 7 billion people;
You're never alone in what you feel.
Everyone is the kid at the edge of the group, trying to play grownup,
Wearing too-short dresses and feeling too much responsibility.
We are all the little kids looking up to the big kids doing **** we didn't even know was possible.

You try and make everyone's day a little brighter, but
Sometimes people don't need your help to do that.
Sometimes, people don't want their world to be bright.
Sometimes people just want you to ******* and leave them alone to cry in the dark.
You don't see that you are not the sun, but just a star, and there are other stars and other lights.
By yourself you soon weary and burn out, but if you let other people help you, you can change the world.
But no.
You refuse. You are the guardian
That you always needed and never had,
And it's eating you alive.

******, what the hell am I supposed to say to take away the worry and stress and exhaustion of being you?
How in the name of heaven can
I
Take all of your brokenness and unshed tears and dark nights
And shape it into something deep and beautiful, not pretty, but beautiful?

And how can I make you see that we all feel that, some variation at least, and
You're only alone because you let yourself be alone?
I can't help you when you're living a life of self-imposed panic,
The anxiety you force yourself to face ripping through you like tsunamis.
Refusal to relax is a death wish that won't be answered for untold years,
All I can do is sit, and watch, and wait, and try to catch your burned-out soul
When it finally gives in, cracking at the
Stretched-too-thin seams.

I'm here for you, I promise I'll always be here, but I don't know how to heal you.
I'm sorry.
So sorry.

I was born into a
Hall of wooden pews and
Sundays full of crinkling satin bows,
Confronted by a stern-faced woman with iron grey curls
Tighter than her heart.
I remember very little of those
Sunday rooms, mazes of correct answers and long half-hours
I was raised through new pews,
Carpeted halls and
Long hours with brown haired ladies
A book 1200 pages thick of
Tradition and my mother's folded hands as I peek
From under my bowed head,
Earning sharp reprimands from white  robed men.

I saw them,
Of course,
Walking in Dearborn, Detroit, Ann Arbor, far away lands of unrest, but
They weren't in little, white, homogenous Chelsea, Michigan,
Of course,
Not them.
Yet I marveled at soft amber skin
And deep chocolate eyes full of
More galaxies than I ever knew existed,
Split solar systems of hushed mosques and mosaics that I was never
Allowed to see.

But I loved it.

My room became a tiny haven,
My dusty mirror showing a soft headscarf wrapped carefully,
Gently,
Over flyaway frizz,
Green cotton matching hazel eyes.
I knew not the complexities,
So I faked them,
Simply kneeling because I could not
Remember all the beautiful
Dances of prostration to praise another name of God.
Foreign syllables try to roll from my strangely
English tongue; I never realized how
Odd and stiff my born language is,
Too full of contradictions and
Double entendres, strict lines of black and white
Inky blood spilled on snowy sheets of paper,
Ancient characters telling me how to live my life.
As far as I'm concerned,
Allah (swt) and God are just two names
For the same deity,
And I simply preferred
Fajr
Dhuhr
'Asr
Maghrib
'Isha
Over the Lord's Prayer and
Hail Mary.
My rosary beads were quiet patches of rakaahs
Though I could not pronounce any of the words.

I kept secrets too heavy to lift into the
Dark recesses of my mental hiding-holes
Instead dwelling in discrepancies and dealing in bargains.
Half of me fit perfectly to each,
A blasphemous picture of the ****** Mary
Transposed to the cover of a Qur'an
I had never opened, like the
Guilt-edged pages of Bibles growing weary
Under my desk.
Two irreconcilable pieces of religion,
Broken images of stained glass crowns
That can't be formed into the intricate patterns of an
"Exotic" heart.
So for today I pack away my rakaahs and prostrations in a wooden box,
And take up my cross again.
Someday, though,
My heart will chase itself through the five pillars,
And I will shake out the green cotton,
Wrapping it carefully over a flyaway soul.

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

Waves roll in and out and
I drift on the tide,
A stirring corpse that has been
Exhausted by your love.
You kiss and touch and care,
Yet all the while a fortress is growing around your
Heart,
To keep me safe from secrets that can't be shared
To anyone,
Lest the spider-web strings
Of relationships
Should tear.
I am bird in a golden cage,
Whose bars are plenty
Far enough apart to let me
Slip through,
Yet I am content to sing
In my self-enforced captivity
So That our kingdom can become a fairytale.
Yet I have tumbled from my perch and
Landed in the real world,
Slumping on ***** sidewalks and in cluttered homes.
What do I have to do to keep myself
From blowing away on the wind
While you turn to a zombie in front of a screen
Covered in games full of fantasy and giants?
I am lost, wandering in a maze of confusion and first love,
And you are not there to save me.

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

Gone.
G-O-N-E,
Four letters that represent the hurt
In me,
Cold cold rain , don't care if it don't feel so nice
When everything it touches
Is already made of ice
You left me empty,
An abandoned house on a sketchy corner,
Cracked sidewalks running down the boulevards of
My heart
Gone,
And my life ain't ever coming back.
Oh, stand me on a pedestal,
I'm made of marble, pale and smooth,
I won't break when you drop me - ha!
That's a lie, just like the tears in your eyes
When you said goodbye - gone.

Grandfather,
I'm sorry.
I know we don't talk much anymore..
Barely once a year.
You're old,
Your skin the weathered brown of a man
Who has lived in among the trees and your own roots,
Hard work and New England weather shaping the crags of your muscles and
The hills of your mind.
Grandfather,
I don't know you
You've gotten too distant,
Nothing more than a collection of colorful memories drifting lazily in
A summer lake.
Your face is familiar, but it is too large,
Bloated, with 3 days worth of stubble on your double chin.
Grandfather,
It's not your fault, I know
You've had a hard life
Your body has just finally failed you
And you pretend to not notice that you are too old to not notice your aging
You creep so slowly with your walker,
Looking wistfully over the water,
Seeing shades of yourself sailing on the breezy waves.
I hear whispered conversations of doctors offices and
Estates and wills and old family rivalries,
Too much for you to hold in your mind anymore.
Grandfather,
You don't ask for anything.
Maybe you don't know what you need.
Grandfather,
This is my gift to you.
This moment of privacy and silence
When you lean on the counter to steady your hand as
You take your innumerable medications
Your breath catching quickly in your ruined lungs and your eyes squeezing shut over 7 decades of memories.
I don't let you see that I notice your
Blank look or gentle snores at the table,
Or see how much you struggle to get down the stairs with a leg swollen to twice the normal size.
Maybe you don't see what you need
Or don't care
But maybe I can help
In my own, selfish teenage way
I can assume what you need,
What words might make you reconsider your stubborn
Indifference to your dying health.
Grandfather,
I love you.

The steel shovel bites through cold dust,
Rain dripping softly into
A pit of despair
Surrounded by a sea of black coats.
Red roses drop gently down into
The half-inch of mud at the bottom,
Onto the wooden box that looks warm
Even in the October wind,
Containing all the memories of a lifetime.
A small girl crouches by the
Grave
Of her father,
Too young to sense the
Space left by a life.

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.

Jokes about pretty
Faces, hips, sensual thighs
The truth? - Beautiful

We have a dancing love,
He and I,
Dancing on the windswept heather,
Laughter ringing over the sea
Him and me.
We have a quiet love,
He and I,
Curled by crackling fires,
Poems whispered on a cloudy eve
Him and me.
We have a wild love,
He and I,
Sparks flying from rich red lips,
Shaking the branches of the willow tree
Him and me.

There we were.
A dozen and a half middle-class white kids from Chelsea, Michigan
Who had convinced our parents to pay $175 to let us go down to Chicago and help homeless people in the name of God.
There we were.
Including the tall, gangly kid who had never been out Michigan and who held
His backpack in front of him as if he
Thought it might make a good weapon,
The ****** girl who was only there because her mom ran the church office,
And me, there because I honestly had nothing better to do over spring break
And I thought it might look good on a college application someday.

The soup kitchen was a place I would have never eaten uin a million years.
The ceilings were low, too low, oppressing the already oppressed with their
Chip board panels and bright, sterile lighting,
Table of sticky Formica that had clearly seen better days  
Surrounded by hard, plastic mismatched chairs, and
The food was no better,
Number 10 cans of dreariness and shame and just-one-more-day-til-I-can-get-a-job.
We were instructed to sit at a table where we didn't know anybody.
The gangly boy held his backpack on his lap as he sat with a group of grey-haired old men reminiscing about having
A great life, a good life, a better life, a not-terrible life, a life at all.
****** girl sat at a table with a collection of ***** children, and was instantaneously on her phone.
And I went to a table with a middle-aged black woman with a little boy.
I sat down.
The plastic chair dug into the backs of my thighs and the lighting units hummed and flickered like a
Hoard of discontented bees.
The woman looked at me, then at the bowl of soup, grey-brown with un-identified meat.
She was overweight, and she smelled. I almost choked on the
Scent of body odor and oil, cigarettes, alcohol, city streets, homelessness, despair.
She looked at me again.
My name is Josie Gonzalez.
I know that sounds Mexican but I ain't no Hispanic, she said.  
She went back to eating.
Silence.
Uncomfortable, awkward.
Silence.
I looked at her little boy, joyous, handsome, and
She looked too,
And I have never seen a person change as much as she did when she looked at her little boy
From a sad, lonely, homeless woman she became the proudest mother in the whole world.
She was the most beautiful person I've ever seen.
Her eyes lit up and I saw that they were the
Prettiest chocolate brown.
She smiled,
And far from noticing the stained, yellowed tombstones of her teeth
I saw how wide and honest that smile seemed.
I smiled too, I couldn't help it and suddenly
I felt like I'd known her my entire life.
We are all human. We will at one point all be
Homeless, lost, lovelorn, broken, or confused,
Stranded in a bad place with almost no options.
So be forgiving.
Share a meal, share a hug, share a smile.
Share hope, share love.
Share life.
Here we are.

A backwards world
Where teardrops fall
On petals unfurled;
Live your life behind a wall.

Don't show the pain,
Just follow the crowd
The drip-drop of rain,
Silent screaming so loud.

Strangers give kisses
While friends hand you knives;
What you don't know you can't miss;
Our thousands of lies.

Hiding the shame
Behind perfect expressions,
Falling from fame
Into depression.

Everyone walking around
With these secrets inside,
Fall to the ground
And a part of you died.

My stomach aches
When I think of all those babies,
Ribs pressed out against dry skin,
Shrunken brains and swollen stomachs
Straining to escape a poverty
That makes minimum wage
Look like a fortune.
$7.25 an hour, when millions live on
Less than $7 a week,
Pennies that are left warming in parking lots,
Buying another day of life for gaping mouths.
Children are supposed to run, jump  
Play, laugh, learn,
Yet thousands sit blank-eyed
Staring at a future painted in
War-torn red, lonely navy,
And consuming, starving, empty black
Not having enough energy to
Lift thin, pale lips into a weak smile,
Let alone traipse miles of dusty sorrow to school each day.
My soul aches for tears shed in
Dark, hungry nights
Prayers uttered wordlessly
Into the crescent moon
As razor thin as their arms.

I hate red.
Red is the color of his lips when he whispers in my ear,
The color of his dress that one time we danced,
The feeling in the back of my eyes
When I'm told I am not
The same to him anymore,
No longer worthy,
He is a bee floating from flower to flower
And I am the sunset-colored blossom too shy to walk away.
Red is the way I begged my sister to let me wear her crimson blouse when I went to see him
Because I know it's his favorite color
And I didn't care that she yelled at me later.
Red is the fire in my stomach that pours too much smoke into my lungs,
Leaving me choking on secrets, and fear, and
Emotions that don't deserve to exist because
I knew all along that this was going to happen.
Red is the way I should be angry but instead I feel numb,
Numb in a way that no scarlet late-night passions or self-inflicted bloodstains
Will banish.
Red, like the shadows in the night that are too unique to be ordinary black,
Instead creeping over tired limbs with a vibrancy
Out of place in the grey shades of my thoughts.
Red, the feeling of heat in my sternum when he said he maybe liked me,
The way my face grew warm with my sister's teasing,
The way my heart fluttered too fast,
Catching me off guard when he held my hand,
The confusion when he wasn't  comfortable with me,
The savage resentment taking over my mind
When he confessed his non-attraction to me.
Red, fading slowly to the dusty leftover
Pink-brown tones
Of roses left too long in a vase.
I hate red.

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 sigh, my soul bubbling up from between
Rose petal lips,
Silent arpeggios of emotion falling from
Eyes, mouth, ears
Shimmering like heat waves on an empty road
I am in a mood for words
Deep words, warm and silty as a
River bed in summer
Quiet thoughts sinking like stones
Through endless evenings, barely rippling
The still, glowing sunsets
Soft words, like my grandmother's creased hands holding out
Smooth bits of sea glass for her granddaughter to smile at,
Clapping her grubby fingers
Dreamy whispers glide across silver lakes,
Reflections of dark velvet and diamonds
Stretched over the bones of the universe
I am in a mood for words
Heavy words and light words
Separating heaven and hell, I float betwixt
Drifting aimlessly in front of drowsy fires,
Pages littering my lap, books spineless from re-reading
My slow breath, thudding heart becoming a dictionary
My mind sleeping under darkness, softly
Gentle whispers of labyrinthine poems
Infinite, eternal

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

Society is just a bunch of little kids
Playing in the dirt,
Grubby fingers digging in the mud,
Wide eyes and buck toothed grins
Awestruck by shiny pebbles.
All we will ever know or will ever see
Is contained in this 10 by 10 square
Of ants and stray blades of grass,
Hands sticky with fruit juice.

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

Starlight from a bottle  
To drown my tears, liquid sorrow
Seeping through my veins, filling
Gaping black holes with empty memories
Of your love.

Watch the clock with blank eyes,
Seconds ticking past, a wasted life
Lost in memories of sunshine and pianos,
Nothing but memories now.

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.

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.