Tough pills to swallow,
all these little moments
sweet under street lamps
smiles between white sheets
white teeth
bared against
words too big to chew

Drink up sunlight
soak up moonlight
wring out lamplight
from the corners of the room
to make space for shadows

Hard to see in the day
what I feel in the dark

Drink me, Alice
See what happens when the bottle spills out
moments that add up too well

Hard to swallow down.

Heart cold
hands clean
words gold
tongue mean

You're a liar
You're on fire

So why's your heart cold?

Why're your hands

Clean?

Paper faces and silicone smiles-
Where’d you get that mask, little girl?
Looks an awful lot like

me.

Listen to me
Sometimes we cannot change who we are
What we are
What we crave
And what we don't
How we feel
And how we breath

Listen to me
There are going to be those people
Who leave holes in your heart
Bright sparks
Left over from ephemeral intensity
That's just how it is
That's life

And if you think that I am not one of those people
Then perhaps you do not know me
At all.

Listen to me

I'm sorry

For the unanswered texts
The dropped calls
The silence

Listen to me

I'm sorry

About the anxiety
I've got to have room to breath
I will never not need that; to be left alone
I have already made a life for myself
I cannot change that trajectory

Listen to me
I am not Cinderella
I am not Sleeping Beauty
I am not a princess
I have no desire to be one
I am a sovereign ruler of my own domain-

Listen to me.
I do not need anyone to complete me
I am whole on my own two feet
And if I have holes in me
Maybe I like them there

Maybe I don't mind being so light

Don't think I lack the capacity to care
I care. I love. I do.
But I am not made to make a home

Listen to me
I love that you are
That you like being close to home
Close to family
Sensitive, caring

But you must understand
That I am not.

I am not.

Listen to me
I care
But I cannot be looking for forever.

I can see your ribs
Jacob's ladder holding your organs in tight
Count them up
Un deux trois
Cats on your socks
And the world on your shoulders

Are you a god that you can stand the weight of seven billion souls?

How many times have you seen night turn to day and back again?

You've got history stenciled into your skin
Your father's complexion and your mother's fingers
In a combination so significant that only the youth can relate
Hard to be, hard to grow
When your ancestors have already grown so tall behind you

Set down the planet for a while
Give it a good kick
Watch it roll
Time spun the wrong way
A million sunrises in a moment

Is this not better?
Teeth flashing in backtracked frowns
All the laughs before they happen

Jonah swallows the whale in this one

Maybe you should eat something too.

Happy Birthday

We cry all the time, you and I
Blond hair and sunshine smiles and anxiety and shiny grades

And love.
Love, love, love
Love; Family

You share, I share
I give, you take, we take, we take.

We take meanness and swallow it down, insecurities from other people and make them ours

You go to private school and I do not but you and I, we smile in solidarity
Sit at the family dining table in solidarity
I have a spot at that table and an extra mattress in your room

In solidarity.

A sister, a friend, a mirror.
Let me always be your mirror, for I love you more than you may ever love yourself
It's the least we could do for each other

Tonight we cry by laughing, spill sunshine across the table because what a wonderful thing it is to have something that will never scrub out of your soul

My dear, Happy Birthday.

You're an absolute menace
Who taught you to break hearts like that?

Who put a young man from the backstreets of a city in the 1940s into your body?

Not a care in the world, it's brash confidence, you love hard hit hard
All or nothing
It's who you are.

Young woman.

Braids and a baseball cap
Complexes piling up behind your eyes

You wear fake smiles like they're going out of style
Smile real ones at the people you'll grow up to hurt the most

Who taught you how to use your womanhood as a weapon?

Maybe nobody,
Maybe nobody.

Maybe you taught yourself. Dumb lucky teenager, scrappy as hell and ****** to boot

Sins on your shoulders, a good heart.
You're a menace, a freak

It's unbelievable, truly,
It's obscene, really

They worship the ground you walk on and you go home and cry in the closet.