I am alive by luck at this point.
I wonder if the gun that will eventually take me has been made.
Whose trigger will bury me.
How many bullets, like a flock of sparrows, will come carry my life to its final bed.
Today, I am alive but there is no law to thank.
If not me, then someone else.
Born into a game of chance we never asked for. Traded diplomas for obituaries. Traded graduation speeches for eulogies. Traded futures for an early grave. Forced to cash in their chips. We don’t want to play anymore.
And this too is eulogy. And this too is prayer. And this too can resurrect the coffin wood back to a tree. Can sing back alive whatever parts of you died with them. Whatever leapt in your throat at yet another headline.
Mourning until you, too, are a thing to mourn.
But we will no longer be martyrs.
We are the rude awakening to politicians who pawned out our safety, who bartered our lives for bribes.
You say “gun reform is not the answer” but all I can see is a bullet rattling like a pinball in an innocent student’s jaw.
You smell like gun smoke and
I can see the AR15 you're holding behind your back and
I guess it's easy to crack jokes about dodging bullets when you're the one firing them.
Give teachers books not bullets:
Kafka isn’t kevlar.
Bronte isn’t bulletproof.
And how sick is it that we must add school shootings to your list of proud american traditions.
Throwing opinions like punches.
How many more have to die before you decide your ego isn’t as important as you think it is?
And I, too, am buried alive
My soggy grave parting its greedy lips.
To you, my bones, when ground into gunpowder and mixed into water, taste like champagne.
My pulse, as thin as an obituary panting beneath sweaty palms, and sure
We are “just kids,”
But you are forgetting we are the next generation
And you autopsy your fists.
Call it reclamatory.
Lately, when asked “how are you?” I respond with a name no longer living.
And who knows if mine will be next

He will not come dressed in a red cape and horns, no, it is so much more than that. He will masquerade as everything you’ve ever wanted. Deception is the name of the game and he knows exactly what he is doing.
Little girls who play with fire get their fingers burned and I’m still picking the soot out from underneath my fingernails.
You see, it is easy to mistake the flames for light when you don’t know any better.
Things that promise light seldom go unheard, and he isn’t any different. It sounds a little less like a fire alarm, a little more like a siren song.
And though he sets your heart ablaze, he will fill your lungs with smoke, I promise you. That is not what they mean when they say he takes your breath away.
Boys like him will only starve all of the oxygen from the room and leave you choking.
He will lick the kerosene from your palms and tell you it will quell the flames.
And he will make you believe that this is what it feels like to finally be warm.
But there is no safety in the tongues of burnished flame.
Don’t let your dignity go up in smoke.
They say fire and gunpowder do not sleep together…
Darling, be the gunpowder.
Where there is smoke, there is always fire.
Darling, he is the fire.
So follow it back to him.
After all, he is the one who started it
Darling, finish it.
Rise from the ashes of the one who thought he was fireproof all along.

poetry drips off of your tongue like honey
I wonder if you kiss me will I be able to taste it
maybe then i’ll have some honey too

and honey you know they could paint the town red with the blood they lick from our palms

And I wonder how many calories are in the flesh of the inside of my cheeks

You must clip your dead ends if you want to grow
And honey I ain’t just talking about hair

I am told I must be loved as if it is dangerous to drop me, but I cannot decide if I am glass or a grenade.
Maybe both.

I might as well change my name to Secondhand Smoke. Nothing more than roadkill. Not a tragedy: an eyesore.

In a world where playing dead is safer than speaking up, I rise.
I rise.

I’ve been biting my tongue for so long that blood is dripping down my chin

Confidence
Is my second language.
I try to speak in the tongues of the greats:
World leaders, activists, rebels.
I attempt to curl my tongue around the foreign syllables of Self-assurance,
Too heavy to dictate with the proper connotations.
You see, I am still learning this language.
I conjugate with firm handshakes,
Pronounce with eye contact,
Communicate with poise...
Some of the time.
You see, I am not yet fluent in this vocabulary,
Cannot articulate with precision my identity.
I hear the echoes of voices rolling consonants and vowels off their lips like a hymn:
Some people have spoken it since birth,
Have merely acquired it.
Others, like me, have had to work for it,
Have had to force our mouths into alien configurations,
Into abstract lingual shapes, learning how to speak the way a fawn learns to walk:
Gawkily and with a resigned unfamiliarity.
My native tongue cannot enunciate all of the curves and straight edges of Fearlessness,
But ******* does it try.
My voice’s inflection is heavily accented with uncertainty;
Anyone who hears me knows that confidence is not my first language.
But that does not mean that my voice will break on the bones of my past mistakes.
It does not mean I cannot speak the words without my chin up, eyes unblinking, voice unwavering, as un-fluent as it may be.
It does not mean that my accented second language is any less correct than your first.
I am training my mouth to say “no” in a different language,
To say “no” with my mouth closed.
Letters drip off of my tongue like honey but not half as sweet.
But who dictates verbalization?
Who decides that my speech is too broken to accommodate coherent oration
I ask you:
is this soapbox sermon any less fluent than our history textbooks?
Is my broken English any less multifaceted than yours?
I will tell you
My lack of coherent eloquence is no less worthy of my lungs than of yours.

Honey don’t you know that conscience makes cowards of us all but so does ignorance

Whoever said nothing dries sooner than a tear must have never had their heart broken

When I look at you I see women’s flesh that you wear like animal pelts from another victorious conquest and I wonder whose face you will wear next and I wonder if it will be mine

And boy when you grow into your predatory grin you will know I was right

Boys taught to equate harassment to flirtation grow into men with flesh-eating hands

Don’t eulogize me before my body’s even cold

Spinning your lies into gold

Why do your lips taste like fools’ gold

And what am I if not collateral damage

I wonder what language they will write my obituary in

He built a wall
But honey don't you know that fallen walls become bridges

I don't believe in heaven
But sleeping in your arms is the closest I'll ever come

your energy is intoxicating
if this is addiction
i don't ever want to be sober

Dear misogynists,

Let’s be very clear here.
Boys are not ******* by nature. It’s not in their genetic makeup to automatically be mean-spirited or cruel. Being born with a ***** does not predispose anyone to being the kind of person whose hands make a welcome mat of my hipbones, who licks his lips as if looking at an appetizer, whose breath laced with tequila, privilege, and desperation slurs "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth, baby?" from the other side of the street.
Genetics does not do that. Society does.

Dear misogynists,

It is the reason I know Title IX better than my own social security number. It is the reason I have to clench my keys in white-knuckled fists when I walk home from school. It is the reason I avoid eye contact at all costs because that "counts as permission." It is the reason I am told my mouth is useless unless he's the one putting something in it. It is the reason women all over this ******* planet get asked "Well... What were you wearing?" because apparently my outfit speaks louder than my voice, but you must not have met me because I can be pretty **** loud.

Dear misogynists,

It is the reason I am told "You know boys won't like you if you don't stop with that feminist crap." Who the **** asked you? If you think that passionately wanting equality and not being afraid to voice that is "crap," I don't want you to like me anyway; in fact, I want you as far away from me as ******* possible. I don't give a **** about your disapproval and I never will.

Dear misogynists,

Maybe you're right - "locker room talk" is as American as baseball, or apple pie, or roofies. "How could he possibly help himself? If he saw you in that dress, what was he supposed to do? NOT assume you wanted him??"
YES. That's exactly what he was supposed to do: NOT assume I wanted him, or anyone else in the room for that matter. Stop excusing ****** harassment because "boys will be boys;" my skirt is not an invitation, nor is anything but the sober word "yes" - and I include the word "sober" because yes, it does make a difference.

Dear misogynists,

So no. I don't give a ****.
And no. I won't stop with "that feminist crap."
And no. Boys will not be boys. Boys will be held accountable for their actions, just like everybody else.
And yes. I do kiss my mother with this mouth, but you can keep dreaming.

Signed, a Feminist

a little less like an alarm,
a little more like being trapped in a burning building,
mistaking the fire for warmth,
mistaking the heat for passion,
mistaking the smoke for breathless bliss,
but things that promise light seldom go unheard,
and you aren't any different

i know it all too well
what sounded at first like the sweet promise of freedom when sung like a breathy ballad tell me what does your siren song sound like? mine sounds like everything i've  ever wanted, like dreams come true. i lived my life in search of warmth and light but i didn't realize that house fires seem a lot like warmth and light when you don't know any better. i spent my life throat choking on smoke, eyes watering, lungs starving, flesh burning, and thinking that i had finally been warm is this what it's supposed to feel like? i tell myself it isnt suffocating me, i just can't catch my breath around them, they take my breath away. i cannot hear the siren alarm in my ears to get out, it only sounds like fireworks, and the heat feels like passion. there is no safety in the tongues of burnished white-hot flames like fraudulent deception masquerading as miracles no, no, it is so much more than that.

There's a kind of surreality that comes with depression. I used to hate that word - depression. I used to be afraid of it, as if naming my nightmare would make it more real. I've become accustomed to its manipulation, now - the way its self-hatred coils inside you, the way its fear winds itself around each of your ribs, the way it twines against your collarbones and strangles you and steals your breath, the way it makes a home of your body by becoming your body, by becoming you.
Your parents always warn you about strangers, but what if the stranger is you?

i miss make-believe raindrop races on window panes down the highway.
i miss puddle jumping in dirt roads.
i miss muddy sunflower boots.
i miss hiding giggles behind daisy patches during hide-and-seek.
i miss scraped knees and climbing trees.
i miss forest picnics by the river.
i miss jumping from porches, believing i was invincible, even after breaking my wrist.
i miss feeling magical and powerful and important.

demons rarely come dressed
in a red cape and horns.
no.
they come dressed as
everything you've ever wanted.

sewing the open wounds shut
hurts just as much
as the wounds themselves

why does everyone say
that we must try to love each other
by overcoming our differences?
we should love each other,
not in spite of our differences,
but because of them

someone once told me
no one cares unless you're
pretty
or
dying
but it scares me
how often those two overlap

No
I will not only speak when spoken to
No
I do not belong to you
No
I do not belong to anyone
No
I am not a prize to be won
Not a trophy to collect dust on a forgotten shelf
Not a perfect doll with lifeless eyes
Not a possession
Not a territory for you to mark
Not a piece of meat
Not whatever you want me to be

And yes
I do kiss my mother with this mouth

dear little girls,

who taught you to open your legs before opening your mouth?
who taught you that the only use for a woman's lips is anything other than speaking her mind?
who taught you that women who say "leave me alone" are worth less than those who say "yes, daddy"?
who taught you that the fire behind your eyes should be snuffed out?

Those people are the worst teachers who little girls like you are learning the most from.
I say, look those people in the face and say "*******."

That flame behind those fierce eyes of yours?
If it will set the world ablaze, I say let it.
I say let gasoline fall like rain.
I say dance in the ashes of the world that thought it was fireproof.
I say
Let.
It.
Burn.

my bones are hollow
like those of a mother bird's
but when i force myself to throw up,
the only child i am feeding
is the madness
that lives in the nest
of my own mind

i swallow my pride like maggots
in cocoons of silence,
and when they turn into butterflies
fluttering in my stomach
i want to *****
but he steals them from my throat
and tacks their wings to his wall

i'm sorry, since when was my shoulder an invitation?
since when were my shorts a request?
since when did anything but my mouth spell out the word "yes"?
since when did "no" mean "yes"?
since when did wearing shorts make me desperate,
but isn't that what you were begging for?
you say i'm a **** for showing my shoulders,
but isn't that what you wanted in the first place?
it's when the guidance counselor says,
"well, what were you wearing?"
that you should know there is a problem.

i spend my time
reading ghost stories
and seeing myself in them.
my every footstep becomes a graveyard,
my every word a tombstone,
and I am now the ghost who haunts them.
it's fun to visit a haunted house
once, maybe twice
but no one wants to live there.
if ringing my doorbell is a joke,
then my love is only the punch line

if depression = darkness
i'm no longer afraid of the dark,
but perhaps that's part of the problem