I look at old photographs of picturesque
places we’d traveled to together our faces teeming with a burgeoning smile
that is locked and keyless over pixels
that remain unchanged by time they so dutifully remind me that we used
be together and happy within this gallery of sorts

I am no longer
what you wished
me to be
when the flurry
of the wind comes
to brush my hair
I let it

each of the seedling kindnesses you plant
every small deed you do lives like a
giant redwood year after you're gone--
all your goodwill skipping over time's
lengthy lake to ripple

They have started dressing as civilians waiting
for professors outside their classes taken, even if
they are residents they are arrested to be deported.

What dream of democracy have your tucked
in your shirt's pocket like a card you can pull
out and say "here, free speech" just for show  

Where is it? where is the discourse that democracy connotes?
suing law firms that bring cases against your point of view
because if only your opinion matters then what is freedom of speech ?

And what is freedom of speech used to harm another
but something as untamed and vicious like this country's founding
Who says they will not come after you?

first them, then you ? first the folks on the margins, then you?
you samson , you lie with delilah. your freedoms one by one
extinguishing like candles over constitutional cake

They have dressed like civilians and started taking people. They have dressed like civilians and they are taking people. They are
not upholding a democracy: they are taking it away

sometimes its the little child in your ventral cavity
that overwhelmed with storms of emotion becomes
flustered & suspended in its gusts, unable to touch ground
this youngness of a heart shouts not at the person
in front of them but for relief--

a cherub's hand are as soft as your anger
so do not judge yourself for your irritation, it is the softest
part of you exposed, places you wish to control
carrying the phantoms of a hurt done long ago

gently slide your anger onto my palm
even outrage has a purpose

sometimes all the softness in the huecos
between cavities declare themselves present

You took all your negative thoughts and built a box around your head. The sky only as  high as its cardboard ceiling.


It’s time you start to tear through it. There is another world with its  pull of potential
                with its immense
positive intention
                                             waiting for you