this highway is eternal,
and your hands are so temporary,
so small and delicate compared to mine.
the sound of rain on the roof
is nothing compared to my thrumming heart.
a hummingbird only lives 5 years, at most.

same old black t shirt,
first day of school ID.

buzzed hair starting to grow in,
glimmering from lamination.

slinking slouching sliding,
stumbling betwixt the desks.

the man, the myth, the legend,
just nobody knows he exists

her boogie woogie,
boot and scoot.
her goo bosh vibe,
so small and cute.
silly little Anju stomp,
unaware of self.
bite taken from a chocolate,
stolen from a shelf.
when we are free from this life
we will run in fields
and see the sunset and the joy
life with you yields.

her bouncy run and tickled fun,
her gremlish punch and happy lunch,
her evil smirk makes me berserk,
her boo gosh falls ‘cause it’s a ****,
I don’t know what this rhyme scheme is,
but Emme is my favorite dish,
I’ll eat her every meal and day,
and don’t think in a weird way,
she’s seriously so beautiful,
so pull your pinky,
Hootiful!

LALALALALALALALALALALALALALA

fizzing up like a soda pop
my love is sweet and
cold.

bottled up in the back of my mind
my love, unknown
untold.

she
is walking
toward me
I prepare
to
hold my
cards close

if it wasn't
for you, i'd have made so
many friends by now

a pocket of calm, luxuriating in the places
you've left in your wake. a sour aftertaste
burning the roof of my mouth.

my eyes trace the lines of a sunset
you, in this moment with me, would have forgotten me entirely;
dropped all else to watch.

(the same way i watch you sometimes, accidentally pausing to wonder.)

your hand curls around mine like
a frond in a forest,
quiet. filled with peace and steady promise and a certain tenderness
not easily found in a
busy sweaty world of poorly painted hallways.

whenever we play cards
i know we'll lose. your giggle gives everything away,
unveils all your secrets, even if they are just ink on paper.

(i love to listen, get lost in new distortions, new perspectives on your joy. . . sometimes i wonder if you see that i'm lost, that you recognize the way i give myself to you fully)

your chaotic, full-eyed wonder is
why i see you

platonically, of course, we both agree vehemently

denying all accusations!

the universe may be endless
and we may be specks floating in the void
unknown, unloved, unimportant.
but
fiddling with perspective,
we can frame ourselves
right at the beating heart of the cosmos.

you're like
sunshine through a bottle of honey.
like
the sunflowers i've planted at the side of the house.
like
my neighbor's bees.
like
that Van Gogh painting you have on a shirt.
& all i can do is try to cling to every moment,
to every little smile & every gym period we spend
behind the curtain.
because time is like the sun,
bleaching color over time.

back
behind the curtain
loom chromebook carts & dramatically stacked chairs.
everything looks precarious, somehow
the unneeded extras stacked beyond view.
we lay
sharing a long pillow.
close to the stage, so we can hear when the whistle blows.
& we lay close to each other.
i'm like a furnace,
we joke.
so warm-blooded.
how nice & good & easy it is to just be
happy.
here in this place full of unneeded extras.
the group of us,
giggling on the floor.

Jeffery,
if you're reading this,
(which you might be or you might not be
how am I supposed to know)
this is your sign to
LEAVE ME ALONE.
do not disturb.
these doors are lovingly closed to you.
goodbye.

dissecting the self for strangers;
an ugly kind of exhibition.
"too personal! too much!"
my inner self screams.
and yet it is something I need to do,
to purge these demons by commemorating them as art,
to make sure I remember to forget.

a soft exhale against my neck,
sitting in the car, alone together.
the light is warm, the day is cold.
when fall is gone, remember me
(please?)

crunching on the red leaves
your scarf slowly uncoiling like a cozy snake
from that place where your hair gradually turns into bare flesh.
i pick up the red knit wool, and run after you
into the first night of fall.

diagnosis is an ugly word.
it sounds cold and curvy, like a moldy metal straw.
my mom cried that day, when the doctors said "i'm sorry" and maybe they were sorry, but not as much as me.
can you picture it?
a cold hospital chair, the room smelling of hand sanitizer.
everything seemed so big, then.
gloved hands, the faces attached to them looking concerned, my mom looking more than concerned, and I felt like I was drowning in diagrams and technical-talk, and the hand sanitizer smell was washing over my nose in waves, and the doctors were telling me I would be deaf - can you imagine how I felt?
they say there are five stages of grief, but I think it's like a color spectrum, like red and orange and yellow blending and blending together.
they told me a big word, and they said here, this is what is wrong with you, and I was scared like I had never been before, a creeping stagnant fear, and maybe that is why hospitals make me a little anxious now, and maybe that is why my ears feel delicate and sensitive and I am a little bit scared if what secrets they are hiding.
it really is an ugly word.
huh.

when I was younger I was mildly afraid of my own ears.
they seemed to sensitive, too prone to error,
i preferred not to think about them.
I remember the row of booths at the children's hospital.
come on inside, they said.
let's pretend you're perfectly a-ok.
the wires they stuck in my ears hurt.
they hurt like taking out a splinter that's mildly embedded in you, all rough edges and cold plastic.
needless to say, I was not a-ok.

have you ever touched the stars?
have you ever brushed them aside like grains of salt spilled on a dark tablecloth?
tell me, did they stick to the back of your hand?

wires emerge from the depths of her ears,
an umbilical cord,
keeping her fed and full.
constant stimulus her only recourse
her brain bleached by waves of input
like water through a sieve
(ah, which book was that again?)

write about the grit between your bones
write about the alphabet soup you found in your *****
the words spelling out “I love you”
tell me about how she broke your heart with a flower
tell me about falling in love with a ****
peering through the sidewalk.
I don’t mind
I don’t even brain
After all, darling
I love you

(she tastes of moonbeams)
It’s 3 am I can’t fall asleep.
there lie my battered dreams at her feet
as she does stumbling cartwheel around the school field.
she is spicy and burning
ever intense but I love it.
he is pure sugar
stuffed to the brim with chemical sweetness.
hot sauce or cotton candy?
(he is stuffing his affection down my throat)
he has always been the one I was supposed to love.
he liked me-
(you know, he like liked me)
back in fourth grade
he asked me out on his birthday
an all American happily ever after
he is punk rock and early 2000s songs
stifling instead of comforting.
she is someone who I didn’t know till last year
and even then only really knew of her.
my crush’s girlfriends friend.
we have joked about dating
sometimes she sits in my lap
she starts a spark in my stomach
and I already know she’ll be the death of me because my bones are birch driftwood and my skin is watercolor paper
I am perfectly flammable and she is perfect fire.
I love her more deeply than I even know how.
he is so temporary
a cookie cutter boyfriend
but god the taste of her lips in my head
is what keeps me up at night.
I am sorry that I cannot be who I am supposed to be.
(and you might say But Lucy! You’re dating that all American baseball boy! and I’ll say yes but he was never my first choice. give him my apologies for that, really, but there’s nothing I can do!)
so while I go to the movies and go to the mall
and get cotton candy love stuffed down my throat
her fire and my death
will be on loop
in my heart.

yes I know you love me
but please stop saying that.
It’s all so unbelievably juvenile
a kind of sugary sweet residue that lingers
on the back of your tongue and the back of your brain.
it’s a weighted blanket that is crushing me and crushing me
you’re a well-intentioned All American Boy
blond hair, green eyes,
the whole shebang.
and you tell me you love me at the back of the theatre
(we held hands the whole movie)
and here I am dying in your embrace
and you grin and grin with that dimple of yours
I want to scream LET ME GO
I am not the girl you love
I don’t want to go ride the Ferris wheel with you so we can hold hands at the top
I’d much rather longboard around the neighborhood
and run my hands through a girl’s long hair.
I’d rather the taste of cherry chapstick than cotton candy stickiness
(and yes I love you and I love you but that doesn’t mean I like it)
because you want to grow old with me
and I want to go out in a blaze with my hands wrapped around her waist.

he drinks because he is empty
empty like a used up toothpaste tube
(well, maybe there is a bit more in the old thing but why try to squeeze it out when you can just buy a new one?)
he drinks because he needs to feel something
needs to be something.
his parents always told him he would do something great
now he works at a packing peanuts company
inspecting the hunks of styrofoam for any visible defects.
he drinks because his teachers always told him to finish what he started.
he drinks because of what he could’ve been, because in this case the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.
so he takes another sip from his beer bottle.
because out of all the things he could’ve been
this is the only real possibility,
the only outcome that could ever be solid, be real
him drinking alone
in a pool of sweat and tears and years of wasted
potential

droplets of blood run down her finger
onto the pleated skirt of her uniform
she got into another fight today
they told her she was unnatural
she tells herself she doesn't believe it
but there's a sick feeling
like a parasite squirming in her stomach
feeding off her self esteem.
she opens the door and runs and runs
runs until her feet are barely held together
runs towards the edge of time and then jumps
as she's falling she hears a voice
the principal calls her into his office
he thinks she is nothing special
(he thinks he is nothing special too, but that's another thing)
little does he know the places she's been
trying to escape herself.

raindrops on the skylight
dripping down to the windows
sitting parked by the park
with a starbucks in her hand
she exhales
surrounded by calm
for now
for today
it is enough to just exist

we sit in a field
but instead of stalks of grass
there grows the faintly luminescent tails of falling stars
shimmering red or blue in the darkness.
as i gaze around, i realize that everything here
even the stars, even the sun, even the immortal face of time
is made up of me, as much as i am made up of blood and bone and tissue.
everything except you.
i am simultaneously repelled and attracted by you
so strange, so foriegn,
and yet as comfortable as chatting with an old, old friend.
so i feed a strawberry into your mouth
as you recite the verses of my thoughts
pouring them delicately into my brain
and we watch everything explode

i read poems written by professionals and grow inconceivably jealous.
they are beautiful and morbid in a honey-sweet way so you don't realize quite how bad it actually tastes until you've swallowed it.
they are the dying calls of a cow who has only known captivity, hauntingly high pitched and so human that they almost remind you of yourself.
don't get me wrong, i love them
i love reading them
they seem to understand who i am even though i don't
they seem to know my thoughts before i've thought them
which is why i hate them a bit
it makes sense, unfortunately
i'm a middle schooler (high school soon) with no training to speak of
and yet i am also the cow, i am also the sweet rotting pill of truth so why can't i write like it?
which is why sometimes when i lose motivation i go read one of their poems in the hope that practice will make my poems perfect, that practice will make me perfect.

i. i could write about so many things,
about how i love him like he's a fungus
like something that is creeping and slow and is definitely not planning to just let go anytime soon, how i love him like he's a part of me that i love or rather that i love to hate.

ii. i could write about how i love her and she loves me too but not in the right way.

iii. i could write about how she feels like moonbeams and the wink of a star, like something that you're so lucky to have and you know it.

iiii. i could write about how i only really miss her when we're together, because then i'm afraid, afraid that i won't be how i seem online, afraid that i cannot possibly love her enough to justify this horrible betrayal of friendship which is letting her believe i love her like a friend

iiiii. i could write about how he doesn't love me, how we're not even friends, how he feels like love is a cage, a trap, a sugary addiction (and it was with him)

iiiiii. i could write about how it felt to kiss him even though we didn't kiss, how it felt like you were nothing and he was everything and how he didn't even love himself so i had to do that for him

but i'm just so tired. i'd rather let words dance on my tongue and then tell myself to remember them and then forget, forget the words, forget the emotions, because even if they were beautiful they're tearing me apart, because to write good poetry you have to be able to rip off pieces of yourself and observe them and write them down, even while you're still bleeding.

iiiiiii. i could write this. i could hit the save button and just let it go, go back to wasting the potential that feels so much like something else, like kissing him, like when i'm working on myself, (my work, that is, essays and diagrams and all those pretty little traps) i am really working for someone else, because if i were really doing what i wanted, it wouldn't all feel like a trap, like i'm stuck in a mental net, would it?

iiiiiiii. i could write about things that never happened to me, but they might as well have because the real way to know if things have happened to you is if they changed you, and i am changed like these people in my mind i so love to write about are.

iiiiiiiii.  i could write about how my realest poems are things like this or scenes from my imagination, from people that never lived and never will but suffer like me every day of their nonexistent lives.

now i think i've written enough to know that there won't ever be a good ending to the poem, but i've started it so i have to finish it, and this sentence is just that,
an ending.

~fin~

if only I could speak my feelings

lots to say, yet the crucial absence of a mouth prevents me
overtones of "temporary" when we talk
very well, I'm fine to go out with a bang
everyone has something to say yet no one wants to raise their hand

you're a miracle, but oh so temporary
underground love with no tunnels up
"oh" a sigh running rampant with lost emotions

what is love
but an evolutionary tool
to boost population
what is love but
a chemical cocktail
stewing in your brain.
no, really
what is love?

writing poetry
while in a competitive french quiz
i haven't been listening this whole lesson
i really wish i wasn't third place.
that means i have potential
and it would be a shame,
wouldn't it,
to waste something so many people talk about
even if it doesn't quite seem real

try to try finding yourself
in the middle of a pandemic.
i know!
i'm a germ.

i don't miss you
but i sure miss the feeling
of having someone i loved
more than myself.

let's dance, darling
dance until our muscles wear themselves out
and we drop dead
on your daddy's nice carpet
going out not with a bang
but with one step too many.

if you came crawling back to me
i'd take you no doubt.
even if you still didn't love me.
because that's ok
as long as i have someone to love

shake me from my slumber
i will still be sweating
with a smile on my face.
not a nightmare but
an impossible dream.
the worst of cruelties is knowing you can never come true.

old friends
an email in my inbox
you owe me time
I gave you my heart
and then didn't see you again
for around 1.5 years now
falling out of friendship
but I still love you.
the world owes us time.
(the world owes us a lot of things)

tape my mouth with duct tape
whisper goodnight in my ear
and wonder why I do not respond

a starling made of starlings
vanilla light seeping from the Promethean screen
and for a split second, it all makes sense

words are too small
cramping for this feeling
yet i must share it
<or else how would I know I lived at all?>

people like happy poems . . .
how depressing.

a scream is little
other than a sudden wake
let's all stay asleep

a hopeless romantic
now she's just hopeless.
he was the man (boy, really)
of her dreams

he's not a nightmare, exactly,
it's just that she woke up
and her expectations fell down
to be dashed on the rocks

she's not outright sad
just melancholy
not quite blind,
just an occasional haze

the rose-colored glasses
were knocked off her face
by her own half-asleep arm

shattering, tinkling, singing
a beautiful song of praise and hope
until the clattering glass turns
to a silent, frozen scream

oh why can't she ever be more
than half asleep.
not rested, not stolen away by her dreams
yet not completely here, either
a separate lonely chair
just for her.

she tilts closer to me
she pouts, i can't help but smile
i don't know if she knows how funny she is

a Polaroid picture
faded and creased
i hope she loves me back

sometimes i want to burn things
to see them dance with the fire
two partners, fighting for an infinite second
in the brick fireplace of a temporary being.

then they are gone, turned to ashes
the fire burns itself out.
that dance, so beautiful, so inevitable
only lasted a second
before the dancers had places to be

encore, encore
and get another piece of scrap paper
and light another match.

oh, to be the fire
primitive and swirling.
but no.

i'll just have to watch.

she sits in the bathtub
back to her infinite melancholy
a paperback thriller sitting on the side of the bath.
she reads them to feel something
horror or even a twisted joy.

her mirrors have crayon on them
make me real, more than a doll
she begs at the foot of her bed.

people say she is lost
that's not the problem.
she knows where she is too well
how can you explore
when all you see are finished maps?

she knows who she is
but she doesn't know how she feels

she's a product of her environment
a blank person from blank walls.

there's a difference between loving
and being in love.

i was in love with him.
dancing in the space between our minds
we didn't talk about meaningful things
we were willing fools
until the very end
and even after that.

being in love is being a fool
and throwing yourself into the other person
like jumping off a cliff.

being in love is to dream every day
of kissing them, of holding them finally.

i am not in love anymore.
now i have my friends, my chosen family.
i love them and it is a choice
the best one i have made so far.

mr businessman
with his briefcase full of battered dreams
sometimes he stays up late at night
but not to cry.

now he's an artist
put all his money in a retirement fund
and started his life from scratch

people say he used to be great
but who knows?
maybe he still is.

he doesn't drink anymore
not even as a social activity
it scares him that if he has it one more time
he may lose all semblance of self control.
he's put himself together
but the glue's still drying.

some day,
in a month or a year
an indefinable period of time
his gaping gunshot wounds
will have faded.
covered in scars, he will be the most beautiful person for just an instant.

but what's gone is not forgotten.
sometimes he will trace his fingers over ridges of flesh
and feel the phantom pain of necrosis of the spirit.
he'll be happy -
but not content.

a good businessman
is never content.

mr businessman
walks around with battered dreams in his suitcase
home from his desk job
his closest friends greet him
(a bottle of whiskey and an old guitar)

he wanted to write songs
to make people sing out loud
now he files paperwork
and carefully feeds the things he cares about
through the office paper shredder

he watches birds and wishes he could fly
but mechanical wings have gone the way of his dreams
so he'll settle for just falling

falling asleep, falling alone
falling with no one to catch him

still he sings himself to sleep
moonbeams & moonlight
his voice salty and hot in his throat
like the tears he has swallowed through his life

mr businessman crushed his own dreams
for a penthouse view
and what can i say,
it worked

i see articles
about mothers
whose poems were found
after they died.
in each and every one of these,
their poetry is reportedly amazing
i am always baffled by this
because, objectively,
once a poet has reached a certain level
only their work can go further.
to say it succinctly:
i have seen an amazing poem but not an amazing poet

so is my perspective thrown off?
or is it that those poems have been touched by the special, peculiar glitter
that death brings?

"poetry writes people"
"days feel things"
"true eyes left twisted girls"
"beautiful dream, better screams"
"gravity slowly wrote art"
"familiar hungry poets"
"hear(ing) the outdated void"
"she misses her sweet toothaches" (actually "misses special toothaches but whatever)
"rain forgets promises"
"simple euphoria finding groceries"
"(the) gnarled verses day spawns"
"common machines play unimpressive predictions"
"clothing stained (with) heartbreak"
"scrawled swears share unique stories"

poetry is supposed to be something for everyone
young, old
democrat, republican
punctuation or not
it is something to be encouraged
even if their first poem is a stumbling mess
about a ladybug or some such thing
with no real direction
and the lack of punctuation
it is a poem
and that should be enough