My mother always ends a phone conversation with ‘I love you.’

And she says that it is because you never know
When someone will be taken from you,
and I think that is true.

But her “I love you’s” have different levels;
One said in exasperation to my brothers
when they’re being particularly much

One said quietly to my sisters
as they drift slowly into their dreamscapes
and as she’s closing their door

One said matter-of-factly to me
when I am having a conversation with her.

It always takes me by surprise, and I know that it shouldn’t, but it does because the last level of her “I love you” is reserved for my father.

It is said, almost as an afterthought at the end of their phone conversations, said with frustration and almost resigned to her lot in life.

“— love you.”

The spot for the “I” is a glaring void of things left unsaid

It has given me a new greatest fear that I will grow so complacent in my relationship, in my life, that I too will end phone conversations with “—love you.”

Be all my sins remembered,
Like all of our sins before.

The sins of my flawed father,
That I, the eldest daughter bore

Be all my sins remembered
Rather than all of my good deeds

My sins are signs of my humanity
They’re signs of my shameless needs

Be all my sins remembered
Let her name forever be twined with mine

I have tasted heaven on earth
I am hers to the end of the line

When he comes home, I go into panic mode,
The walls in my brain closing in,
The bile in my throat rising,
My teeth sweating in anticipation of what is to come

When he comes home,
I hope to god that I pass beneath the radar,
Nothing more than a sigh on the breeze,
Nothing more than a ripple in a pond
Nothing for him to notice

When he comes home, I make myself as small as I can,
Hoping that he’ll ignore me like he has all these years,
But knowing that it’s a futile attempt,
Like trying to avoid the burning sun

When he comes home,
The nausea roils in my gut,
Reminding me that I am nothing,
That I will never be anything more than what he paints me to be

When he comes home,
I am reduced to “yes sir” and “no sir,”
To eyes that are glued to the ceiling or floors,
To fidgeting hands and twisting fingers
To nothing more than a decoration to stand in the corner

When he comes home,
I try to retreat to my room,
I try to give him the space that he seems to need,
I try to leave him be and let him sleep,
But nothing seems to work, and he yells all the same

When he comes home,
My home becomes nothing more than a battlefield,
One that I cannot escape,
One that there is no running from,
One from which the injuries are only seen in the trauma that is left behind

When he comes home,
My life becomes nothing more than a play,
A tragedy in which no one survives,
A performance that I am supposed to know,
But stage fright has taken over and the lines mean nothing to me now
And I am frozen, hoping for the curtains to fall to cover my fear

When he comes home,
I quietly
Exit
Stage left.

In all of my twenty years of life,
I have been many things.

A daughter
A sister
A friend
A lover

But now, I am no longer my father’s little girl.

My father doesn’t talk to me anymore;
He says that I don’t look him in the eyes,
And he is right, but not for the reason he believes

I am afraid to look him in the eyes
Because I don’t want to see myself reflected in them,
Proof of my failure to separate myself from him,
Proof that I am him and always will be him

I do not want to become my father,
Stuck in a marriage with no love left
Or love that is there
Only because it is supposed to be

I do not want to become my father,
Constantly on the verge of tiredness,
And whether that tiredness is directed at
His family or his life, I shall never know

Because I do not want to become my father
All sharp words and angry edges,
Keeping everyone around him on their toes,
Keeping my head on a swivel to not upset him

I do not want to be my father.
I do not want to make my children feel
as though they will never measure up to
Impossible standards, set way too high

I do not want to be my father,
Telling my daughter that she’s eating too much
And not looking at me enough,
Guilt-tripping her into half-hearted apologies,
Said with tears trembling in her eyes

I do not want to be my father.
I do not want my children to be frightened of me,
Dreading the thought of my arrival home
Waiting in fear of my reaction to something they’ve done

I do not want to be my father.
My home will be a gentle home,
Peaceful and quiet,
With no rage-filled shouting matches

I do not want to be my father,
Wondering where he went wrong with his daughter,
That she would stand in front of him, angry tears on her cheeks,
Screaming at him that she wishes that she were dead

I do not want to be my father.
Struggling to catch up with the times,
Grudgingly supportive of the daughter that is different,
The daughter that loves men and women,
But only because he has to be

I do not want to be my father
But I wish that sometimes,
I could be his little girl again,
Back when everything was ok
And it still felt like he loved me

I do not want to be my father,
But sometimes,
It feels as though
I will never be anything more

She is my comfort in my storm,
The breath in my lungs
The soul in every poem that I write

When her hands are on my body
And her lips are on my neck
Her name is the prayer on my tongue

Our love looks like reverence
As I raise my hands in surrender,
Waiting for the holy fire to wash me clean

Our love looks like reverence
And your name falls from my lips,
A desperate plea for your touch

Our love looks like reverence
And I am on my knees in front of you
Worshipping your body as it deserves to be

She touches my skin, and I am set ablaze
I rise to meet her touch as birds rise into the sky,
and all I can think of is her

She speaks my name and it’s like a prayer on her lips,
a religion that only she and I are a part of
She speaks my name and I become weak

“This isn’t working.”
What a funny way to say that you’re leaving
A phrase that is arguably too simple for the mess it leaves behind

“It isn’t your fault.”
A cliche if I’ve ever heard one,
And trust me, I’ve heard many over the years

“I wasn’t ready.”
A funny thing to say
When you know at the beginning of anything
Whether you’re ready for it or not

And… “I don’t have time.”
And that’s what it all comes down to,
Isn’t it?

You didn’t have time to deal with me
Didn’t have time to communicate
Didn’t have time to put in the work

You didn’t want to MAKE time
Because I guess you never really
Cared about me in the first place

Countdowns have always seemed bittersweet to me..
The steady ticking away of time
The trickle of sand through the hourglass.
The fading of connections not curated.

I’ve always been morbidly aware of my own doomsday clock,
Slowly beating, decreasing, releasing my
Seconds into the atmosphere around me,
As I wait, sometimes impatiently, for it to hit zero.

Some days, I hope for my hourglass to run dry,
And while I know that that isn’t a healthy mindset,
Some days it is all that I can do to not hurry it along.

Not to take that revolver in my dad’s lockbox,
Not to take those pills in the medicine cabinet,
Not to take that rope and the one wobbly stool
that has sat at our bar for the past five years…

Just beckoning me.
Just wanting me to take that final step
into sweet, sweet oblivion.
But.

If I do take that final step..
Who would be there to pick up the pieces for them?
To clean up the mess that this disgusting body left behind?

Who would be there to finish my paintings,
To sing my unsung list that is ever-expanding,
To write these words that have seemed so forced these past months?

Who would be there for them, when I could not be?
Someone, I am sure, but I have been told that I am irreplaceable,
And while I may not believe that,
I am scared of leaving a mess behind
That my mother cannot bring herself to clean up.

I am scared of leaving behind a mess that would irrevocably break my father,
A mess that would torment my brothers,
A mess that my sisters would never even remember.

And maybe..
Maybe I am scared of the call of oblivion..
Or scared of the unknowingness of it all, rather.

Or perhaps I am tired of thinking
of myself as a mess to be cleaned up,
Nothing more, and nothing less.

And maybe
That is all I need
To survive one more day.

I see so many ads now
they feed into my insecurities
and help me to notice everything that is wrong with me.

"Got stretch marks?"
they ask, and my eyes shamefully
trace down my chest to my inner thighs and I learn to hate what I see.

So I read on, hoping to learn
how to get rid of the natural signs of an ageing vessel
"Neosporin, coconut oil, and olive, and they'll be gone in a week."

The ads proclaim, and so I do as they say
because how can I be pretty
if no one else thinks me so?

"10 Tips on How to Get the Relationship of Your Dreams"
"5 Signs that You're Not as Pretty as You Think You Are"
"4 Things to Try to Spice Up Your *** Life"

"1 Way to Tell Whether the Creepy Old Man on the Corner Thinks You're Worthy of Being Catcalled by Him"

I read on, trying to understand what it is to be pretty
but the more I see,
the more hopeless I become

Men will only ever see me as a piece of meat,
just a pair of **** and an ***,
only there for their enjoyment or pleasure.

but I am not here to make things easy,
I am more than the sum of my parts,
more than my cellulite and hip dips

I revel in my stretch marks
I have grown into the woman I am today,
and I refuse to erase the proof of that.

You have ruined me.. all I can think of is the sun glinting off your spun-chocolate hair, the infinite depths of your sea-blue eyes. All I dream of is your honeyed voice telling me that I am different; I am loved.

You have ruined me. All I hear is static when you aren’t here, that flat, buzzing, grating sound of nothing and everything coming all at once. All I see is uncertainty and anxiety and empty eyes when you aren’t beside me.

You have ruined me, but so did Apollo to Icarus, and Orpheus to Eurydice. To love is to ruin, and dear god, I am irreparable.

Lately I’ve felt as though every little sound and feeling and smell and sight is grating at my nerves and chipping away at my sanity.

My clothes feel constricting and too loose and scratchy and smooth and not right

My ears are full of constant ticking and ringing and noise

My skin wraps my frame too tightly and I want to rip it apart and off of me but then I’d be cold and miserable

It’s all too much and everything is loud and jarring and I feel frenzied and too stuck and not stuck enough and all I want to do is jump in front of a van because then everything would
Just
Be
Quiet.
Blessed and sought-after and evasively, quiet.

When my mom first thought that I was gay,
She and my father sat me down at the kitchen table.

I was fifteen and thought I was in love,
And all they could do was scream at me...

‘You’re a sin; what you feel isn’t natural.’
‘Where did we go wrong?’

And all I had wanted was to love in peace.
But apparently, that was too much to ask from them.

So I stifled myself.

I cut myself off from her and let us wither
Until there was nothing left of us because
I wasn't normal
And I was fifteen
And all I wanted was my mother’s approval
And how could I gain that if I wasn’t normal?

And then I was sixteen and I thought I was in love again
But this time with a seventeen-year-old boy
That knew nothing of love
And everything of sharp edges and even sharper words
But he spoke so pretty to me,
And how could I resist?

But he hurt me worse than anyone else that I’ve known
And he never even cared…

And then I was seventeen.

I was seventeen and my best friend had this mane
Of beautiful hair and I called her lovely and wife
And all the other silly little pet names that high school girls do
But little did she know that her smile
Lit fireworks inside my brain and the swarms of
Butterflies that beat in my chest rivalled that of a drum.

I thought she was beautiful.
I saw the universe in her.

But how could I admit that to myself without admitting it to
My mother, the one person whose validation I crave like
Air and water and life itself?

How could I admit to her that I wasn’t
Her little girl anymore?
That I was a disappointment?

And then I was eighteen.

I was eighteen and numb and not looking for anything when he found me...
I was eighteen and I thought that surely,
Surely
This was it, this was the feeling that I was waiting for.

But it wasn’t and I was eighteen and alone again
But this hurt worse than the others and then I was gone after that summer.

Now, I’m almost nineteen.

I’m almost nineteen and I’ve accepted the fact that
I will disappoint my mother;
The one whose opinion that I value the most;
The one that gave birth to me;
The only one that can tear me down until I feel like nothing.

But she’s my mother so how could I let her go
When she was there for my first word and my first steps
And every one of my other firsts.

My first date.

My first dance.

My first breakup.

She was there when I left for college, and she’ll be there when (if)
I get married.

Because regardless of my choices,
She loves me, and she always will.

And even if I can’t bring my partner home,
I will love her all the same.

So mom, if you see this,
I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that I didn’t turn out how you wanted.
I’m sorry that I disappointed you.

But I’m not sorry for being who I am.

I’m not sorry for thinking women are beautiful
And men are handsome
Because all the world needs is a little bit more love,
And who am I to deprive it of that?

Eternity

When I think of eternity
Your name comes to mind

If I had to choose whether
To give myself up or get rid of you,
I would be nothing more than a sigh on the breeze

If I had to choose between heatstroke
And losing you,
I’d be on the first plane to the Sahara

If I had to choose between you
And an eternity of life,
My dear, I would choose you

Every single time

Dancing at Midnight

Sitting with you is like dancing at midnight;
Quiet, serene, calming, and my favorite thing to do

Across Time Zones

My love for you is stronger than my lack of understanding regarding time zones

Shapelessness of Love

I am a logical person
I think in polygons and geometry
But you come around and the shapes fall apart
Into meaningless squiggles on a page.
There is nothing more beautiful than the shapelessness of love.

Mornings Together

I’m tired of the nights together;
I want the intimacy of watching the rising sun with you

Blood on Cupid’s Arrow

There is blood on Cupid’s Arrow
From where I yanked it from my heart
I refuse to fall in love again
It makes for extremely painful art

Sharing an Umbrella

It starts with sharing an umbrella
And ends with sharing our lives

Worship

My darling, the angels themselves
Could sing your praises and it wouldn’t
Be considered blasphemous

Eye of the Storm

It’s in the eye of my storm
That I find myself with you

Your Name in All of My Poems

No matter what I write, you influence me
It’s your voice reading the words in my head
It’s your breath in the wind
And I find your name in all of my poems

Wedding Cake

I’m waiting for the day that I can shove wedding cake in your mouth

Show Your Love With Your Teeth

Show me the feral side of your love;
Show me the protective side, the carnal side
Show me love with your hands on my hips,
Your breath in my ears
Show me your love with your teeth

Your Harbor

When it all becomes too much,
I can be your safe harbor

Tenderness

Tenderness has never been my forte
But I am a spring flower for you

Wearing Their Clothes

Wearing your clothes would be a special type of heaven

My Heart and a Space for Yours

There’s a space in my chest next to my heart
It’s the perfect size for yours to fit safe and sound

Promises

We were nothing but broken promises
And jagged lies, searching for someone
To make us whole

Kissing at a Stoplight

Imagine….
Kissing at a stoplight
And ******* off everyone behind us

Hunting Down Love

I tried hunting down love, but it always slipped away
Never getting caught in my snares.
I found I had to sit quietly and wait for it to come to me,
Trusting and willing to give me a chance

Keeping Warm

The impatience for the beginning of us
Keeps me warm on cold winter nights

Your Eyes, In Every Life

I would know your eyes in every life
In every incarnation, I would find you

Dreamscape

Without you, my dreamscapes are barren and cold.
With you, they are indescribably beautiful and joyous

Never Look Away

If I could, I would get lost in your eyes
And never look away

We Consume What We Adore

We consume what we adore…
Maybe that is why I am so hungry for snippets of you

Devotional

These poems are my devotional to you
They’re my way of keeping myself honest
My affirmation that I am yours for however
Long you wish me to stay

First Date

We promised a beach trip to each other
I count down the days, hours, and minutes
Til my release into your arms.

Dreaming in City Lights

I dream of you underneath the starry rural skies
And I can’t wait to dream with you ‘neath the bright city lights

Love Letters

My gestures could be love letters
With the way that they so blatantly
Call out for you

I am scared to let go of my sadness. It has become such a big part of my life that I don’t know what I would be without it, and isn’t it better to stick with something familiar rather than throwing your entire personality away on the off chance that you’ll get better?

I am scared to be left alone in this terrible world filled with terrible people. My fear is so much a part of me that I don’t know what I’d do if not worrying about what is to become of the mess of a person I’ve become, and isn’t it better to stick with something familiar rather than throwing your entire personality away on the off chance that you’ll get better?

I am scared to try and fix myself. I am scared to try and become a better person because if I’m a better person then it will just hurt more when I **** up and isn’t it better to stick with something familiar rather than throwing your entire personality away on the off chance that you’ll get better?

I’ve seen myself in love poems from broken boys. I’ve seen myself in the raging ocean, the gusting wind, the blazing heat.

I’ve seen myself in small wildflowers forcing their way through cement, small spots of beauty and tenderness in this broken world.

I’ve seen myself through the cracked mirror in the bathroom and the shattered glances shot at me across rooms.

I found myself in your arms, in the love that you give unconditionally, in the tears in your eyes when you look at me.

I found myself in you.

What are we,
if not stardust
and bone?

What are we,
if not the strength
that flows through us?

What are we,
if not breath and
blood and spirit?

What are we,
if not feral,
wild, and free?

What are we,
if not human?

Inside, I am nothing more than a child
with a branch for a toy sword,
Brandishing it up against
The monsters and villains of my own mind

Inside, I am nothing more than a child,
Crying out for forgiveness for my
Multitude of sins
Against my ancestors of days past

Inside, I am nothing more than a child
That feels as though she isn’t
Good enough for those she loves;
She isn’t good enough to be here

Inside, I am nothing more than a child
That feels as though
She is nothing more than an inconvenience,
That she is nothing more than a burden

"Why can't you be normal?"

"Why can't you feel emotions like every other human being?"

"Why do you have to be so sensitive?"

"Why did you say that?"

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Why can't you just. Be. Normal?"

I wasn't taken, Mama.
I went willingly, pomegranate
juice staining my lips ******.

I am not helpless, Mama.
I am darkness, power, a Queen.
You gave me flowers and he gave me
his everlasting worship.

I am his queen, Mama, his goddess.
He says that I am the one that
brought him to his knees, Mama,
and he is right. I am a terrible
beauty, and oh, I put him on
his hands and knees in worship.

Do not come looking for me, Mama,
because your innocent flower is
nowhere to be found. All that is
left is blood and bone and
pomegranate juice staining my
hands and mouth and setting me free.

Icarus laughed as he fell;
The golden ichor streaming
From his nose, his mouth,
His spun tresses behind him
Fluttering as angel wings do.

Icarus screamed as he plummeted
to the earth; melted wax
scalding his shoulders where
his wings once were; broken
feathers fluttering in his firey wake.

Apollo mourned as Icarus fell,
not a sound issued from his
doomed lips. His wings, torn
and broken and burned, danced
behind him, more lively than
Icarus would ever be.

From me to you and back again
The wine of love stains our hands

The night does sigh in jealousy
Of the searing heat between you and me

Our bodies twist and dance and then
Your walls falter and you let me in

I grip your hands and hold you close
Time freezes with us in lovers’ pose

We twine like two codependent vines
I promise you that you’ll always be mine

Despite all the time we lost
It is you I love the most

When we met, I was Blue,
Shaking, trembling, sobbing
I was the Pacific Ocean;
Cold and withdrawn.

You said hello, and I was Yellow.
A happy, carefree, summergirl.
Yellow as buttercups, as the sun
Warm and caring and healthy.

As I fell, I turned Orange
A warm and comforting love
A cosy couple, a mug of apple cider couple
And a pile of fallen leaves couple.

I turned Gray when winter came
And chased you away from me
I was cold and lifeless once more
But without me, you were also Gray

We came together a second time
And I was Red as the setting sun
Red as roses, Red as the blood in our veins
Red as the hearts that beat for one another once more.