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

me.

Our space doesn’t exist, friend

It doesn’t exist anymore

Stopped being a thing once your Y chromosome didn’t match

My double X

And we realized boys and girls didn’t have sleep overs

So

Take your sticky fingers away from me, dear

Don’t kiss me sloppily on the cheek in thanks for penny candy, dear

Please stop trying to wear my shorts, dear

They are women’s cut, dear, and the five inch inseam... oh dear

You have a girl friend, dear

And you will have another one next month

And the month after that, another one

Our space only exists in-between,

Where platonicy reigns supreme

But that doesn’t exist anymore, because all girls and all boys end up together, right?

Only I’m right here and you’re right here, so we’re togther

It’s just that you’re my little brother from another mother

And I’m your personal driver

Our space doesn’t exist anymore

I don't like to read your words-

A wry smile, bittersweet.

They're too real, too mundane for a dreamer.

This, whispered to me.
What is that supposed to mean?
I was not born with wings
I am from this earth
What is that supposed to mean?

Would you rather me forget
about the blood stained teeth of an old god
the ruined smile of Grace

What is that supposed to mean?

I am not even a writer,
I am only living
and I have never once seen life
walking around without dirt in her nail beds.

Sometimes, it is not about
rising to the challenge
because falling from grace

Just hurts.
It just hurts.

Teeth stained red-
This is not a smile
And this is not a success story,
it is just a story

about life

and it hurts.

How do you know when the
desire to sleep turns into something more than
simple sleep deprivation

How do you know when smiles don't add up the way
they used to

How do you know when emptiness in your
chest cavity starts to define
you

How do you know when you begin to give up things you like to do

How do you know when these aren't just characteristics of a

Well dressed

Stressed and

Unimpressed

Student

Trying to get by

Depression makes everything grey

For me,

Depression makes everything grey.

And it's hard to see the warning signs in full color when you get used to seeing in grey scale

How do you identify these warning signs for such a grey area disorder

How do you tell the real thing apart from life

I guess maybe

You don't. Because

It is a part of my life that comes and goes in waves

Gradually so that you don't notice the tide pooling around your ankles

The color bleeding out at the corners of your vision

Until your feet are stuck in the watery sand

Until it is all grey even though you know the leaves are green

Until it is too late

But how are you supposed to know?

I don't know: Grey Area

Tell me, God, tell me

For real, this time

A good question, if you’ll listen

Where do the gnats go after they get zapped in the bug light?

Tell, me God, tell me

Okay, this one is a good question for sure

Very important stuff

How many times does one need to curse to loose their spot in heaven? Asking for a friend

Tell me, God, tell me

This is a kicker

It’s been keeping me up at night

Why did you decide to make sand? I mean, it’s pretty and all, but it gets everywhere

Tell me, God, Tell me

So, now here’s my biggest question

When am I going to make up my mind? Is that ever in my future or are we just planning on an indecisive personality forever?

Just let me know when you decide, because we both know I won’t

And hey-

Big guy in the sky, this one really is for you, if you’re there

I’m just wondering, you see

Could you tell me one thing:

Where does all the happiness go?

"Happy endings are just stories that haven't finished yet"

  Is that why only the good die young?

  Why young people seem so desperate to leave this earth?

  "**** me now" thrown like casual greetings across school hallways

  Makes it so hard to tell who's really hurting and who's bluffing

  In this strip poker game against life where life always wins

  Takes the clothes right off your back and leaves you naked with a bad hand knowing soon you'll have to sell your body

  And maybe I want to live long enough to see the world end

  Would that be enough compensation?

  I don't think so, because nothing will erase the pain of seeing something beautiful for the first time.

  Except I think that's what they call happiness now, isn't it?

  Because tears don't count unless they're shed over big problems so fake it,

  Bluff it

  I know the moment I get my cards that this second chance was only a play to keep me in the game for one more hand-

  Let's see how much I can loose.

When we were kids,

I loved you so sweetly

I loved you like I loved the taste of strawberries on my tongue

When we were kids,

I loved you in innocence

Under the mindset that you fit comfortably next to me when I lined my life up

Putting all the people together until they stretched like a road in front of me

A path to my success.

My road has potholes aplenty now

From where people left

It has different pieces and bumps in the asphalt from where people came in

It has speedbumps behind me from where I had to slow down over a heartbreak

Oh, when we were kids, I loved you so sweetly.

I like you now. I like you.

See, my tire rims have been dented so easily by the potholes in my journey

And I don't have the money to replace them if you decide to pick up your piece of the concrete and leave.

Lucky charms with all the marshmallows picked out-
picture this:
rainbows and leprechauns
smiles full of gold teeth
angles on the ground with chipped nail polish
on call but for the discounted prayers
the poor neighborhoods
the not entirely righteous
demons of gasoline
guardians of the latchkey kids

I meet angels all the time
they put their wings on my lungs,
fly my breath away

There aren't any marshmallows left
guess I'll have to make my own luck.

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.

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?

The inherent eroticism of religion,
How red the little g gods bleed
By the soda fountain

And all the women who devote themselves to their gods (plural)
Gods like those that ruled over Greece
The flawed ones
The ones that made monsters
and humans both

Is that the neck of a coke bottle or
A glass skinned girl
Between those teeth straightened by mettle?

I’m telling you, if you’ve ever met a priestess
The real kind, the wild kind
You’ll know well enough what it’s like to be eaten alive
And I’m not talking about by the mosquitos in the swamps of Georgia

I’m talking about
How the glass breaks
How it shatters
How it cuts the mouth of that little g god ******
By the soda fountain
And he’s left wanting for more

The taste of blood is acquired like this; early

There’s no such thing as a benevolent divine

It isn't the night-creature's fault that you're afraid of it

perhaps it likes the dark

perhaps it feels safe in small spaces

like under your bed

or rattling around inside your skull.

it isn't the night-creature's fault that it's drawn to the whites of your eyes

maybe it's only ever known fear

and with a history like that, how can you expect the thing to know love?

People bleed, that’s just how it is

They say head wounds bleed the most; do not be alarmed

So what about the invisible gashes in the head and the heart?

How much do they bleed?

When do they stop?

Nations and nationalism;
Religion and re-legend

Grandmother killed the wolf, didn't she?

There is another, separate story
the retelling of an old legend
(all things important are lost in the retelling)

The man turns into a monster at the sight of a
full moon,
turns back again only when somebody loves him.

I think about that grandmother often,
sitting by the fire with a
rifle in her lap-

The things she's seen

The wolves she has left to ****

In the other story, the other legend,
It's the grandmother who loves the wolf
and turns him back

And I think that this one is truer, somehow

Because we are really all just fury things
with barred teeth
that need to be told to come back into the house
to eat the dinner on the table
to stop howling at the sky

all of it, give it all up, for the sake of somebody you love

and if that is not enough, at  least for the sake
of the old woman in the woods
who loved you before your bones were thought up

(hide the blood on your claws, little wolf/monster/thing,
she's just washed the sheets
and they're bright white
the color of the moon
the color of her eyes that were blind all along)

How many prayers does the devil say at night

Does he pray for the ******? For the lonely, wretched souls?

How many Hail Maries does it take to make a poor man smile

Does he know the difference between love and a bottle?

Do you know the difference between love and a bottle?

Counting cars on the front stoop in summer

One, two, three punch buggy no punch back

Lemonade for me and sweet tea for you

This is The South, after all

Only it’s hockey instead of football that’s on the television in my house but

We don’t talk about that since

I say you guys instead of y’all but

We don’t talk about that since

Your daddy has a confederate flag on his porch but

We don’t talk about that since

I grow up and you grow up and we don’t agree on the racial nor gender politics of time but

We don’t talk about that since

I don’t use the term culture of amnesia or white paternalism around you since

We count cars on the front stoop in summer

One, two, three punch puggy no punch back

A tall glass of political awareness for me and a shot of traditionalism for you

and silence between us but

We don’t talk about that since

This is The South, after all

The air always smells of rain
somewhere, right?

So somewhere, you're always knocking on a door
And somewhere, I'm behind the same door
And somewhere, somebody is saying,
'It's for you'

Even though you're not for me, and I
can tell that
just by smelling smelling the air

(Which does not smell like rain)

But these words are for you,
They'll always be for you-

And maybe someday I'll open the door.

It won't be you,
or maybe it will be you
and maybe you'll be here for me

Isn't that a nice story?

You wouldn't believe the stories I tell
myself
while I sit here in the sun
and dream of rain.

Here is what I know:

You give and you give and you give

You give everything to be his daughter, want to be just like him

Want to be loved

Want to be wanted

And he

Takes that at face value

A father must earn his title

You gave him his in advance in hopes that he'd earn it

Instead, somewhere along the way

You mixed it up, thought it was the daughter who needed to provide

Here is what I know:

He takes.

He takes.

He takes.

Give him one last thing, my dear.

Give him up.

Recovery isn't linear

And there was always something wild that called you home.

Could have been me, could have been the wind

Seems we both found refuge running fingers through your hair.

Here's the thing,
It will be alright in the end, I'm told
And if it's not alright, then it can't be the end...
And sometimes I want everything to end,
To bring the world down screaming with me into the flames.
So thank you for stepping in and making it alright with your laugh and your hugs,
For bringing an end of your own that made way to a new beginning,
a healthier way to rise from the ashes of my own making-
A Phoenix.
Because you and I, my dear,
We are made of the same stuff deep down,
So that has to mean that it wasn't a mistake.

Oh, the feeling

Of looking in the mirror

And knowing in your heart that maybe you could be enough

If your chest wasn't hollow

And maybe you would know how to be happy, remember what it was like to be calm

If the head wasn't on fire

The brain is making a funeral pyre for the loss of the soul

But there's nothing in this body left to burn

So it's throwing itself up in flames.

We’re forgetting the most important part, I think

It’s that the hurt is worth it.

It’s worth it.

If nothing else, it is worth it

To love with the risk of pain

Than to never love at all.

In the space between the stars
the black cosmos stares back hungrily,
thirsty for adventure

Little boys now turned men
lying in gutters
looking up at the sky

Sooner or later
you're going to have to realize
that the color of your promises
doesn’t match the silver
of your tongue

Is love, but with no where to go

Is that text "I'm not doing so good"

Of course not, because he's dead

He's dead and your house is so silent it might as well be a coffin but with your name on it

The worst thing?

It's that I cannot bring him back for you

The worst thing?

It's that I cannot take away your pain

The worst thing?

It's that nobody listens

Except for me

And we all know I can't process grief

So the worst thing is that you are there

And I am here

And I cannot make it better

If you're going to bleed, bleed sunshine

Spill light from the cuts on your knees

Paint the grey thing in your chest cavity that looks nothing more than scarred tissue gold

Pretend you are the sun

Pretend you are the sun

Might as well scream some, too.

Only call it laughing.

And when you try to explain your sadness to them, let them not understand a word you're saying because you're supposed to

Be the sun

Even though you didn't ask for people to orbit you, they did so

Give them warmth, give them light

One day you'll burn out but

If you're going to bleed, you might as well bleed light.

And she looked at the man mostly named for a color

He had a real name, of course, but the color was so much more true than that
Names are just sounds, identified

“Oh, you.” A smile, recognized
Maybe she knew him from his own words
or a long, dark wall filled with names from a war from before she was born
or maybe it was more than that

“Oh, you.”
Homecoming
Cliff jumping
A Bildungsroman novel in 18 years

Here it is, hear it coming? You have to listen closely,
it’s in the whisper between two friends
then and now

When is it that we realize we are all just mirrors of each other in the circle of time? Soon, very soon-

We’re coming around the bend of it now, hold on tight and-here: immortality

Oh, you: immortal.

Let me tell it to you this way-

I have never been brave

I have only been afraid

And when people are afraid, they are supposed to do extraordinary things

So I have never been brave

And I will never be brave

Let me tell it to you this way-

I am the worst type of coward

and I will never not be

Just ask my own flesh and blood

It runs in the family

Everybody wants to rule the world

But to become god it the loneliest achievement of them all.

So hold onto the memories
And I’ll hold onto you

And we’ll rule the world together:

Two lost souls clinging to fragmented pasts-

Better than loneliness,
better than loneliness.

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 real.

You’re raw and you’re messy and you’re real
Beautiful

You’re real beautiful.

So let him go gracefully lord knows
boys like to take-
Don’t let him take any more of your time

And don’t let him make you bitter

I know he was a nice substitute for sweetness
Because he was sugar and spice and everything nice
once upon a time for me, too

I’m not made for love

But don’t let him take that away from you

Life’s gonna hurt
And he’s gonna hurt

But darling you are real.

You’re fascinating and smart and real
Strong.

You’re real strong.

Lilac girls sitting in the garden-
expressions once sweet and look how they harden.

Boy turned man and man turned mean, heart replaced by a grinding machine.

But rose bud boy, he aged young-
Lillies and honey dripping from his tongue.

And golden rod girl, she aged old-
they put her in an apron and she fit in the mold.

Lilac girls sitting in the garden.

Candy melts in the sun, but here it hardens

Here is what I know:

You give and you give and you give

Because that's all you know how to do now

Because

Maybe if you keep giving you will be a good daughter

Except somewhere you must have gotten it wrong, gotten mixed up between the duties of a father and a daughter-

But you give and you give and you give

Maybe... maybe you can show him how worthy you are of love

Maybe... maybe he will learn how to give too

But

He takes.

Here is what I know:

He takes and takes and takes

He does not know what grade you are in but

You give him kindness

anyway

You give him love

anyway-

Darling, give him one more thing.

Give up.

Call me when

All that matters is
Empty pop bottles lined up
like toy soldiers
beads of summer rain slipping down the glass

Call me when

All that matters is
The garden bed dusted with snow
imprinted with little ticks of sparrows' feet
small enough to fit on postage stamps

Call me when

All that matters is
The chair in the living room
next to the blue bookcase
that houses all of the books by foreign authors
from places we always wanted to go

Call me when

This is home to you again.

Sometimes I get thrown a little off balance
When I look over expecting to see
Boys I grew up with
Boys
Messy and sticky and smiling
Boys

But now they have five o'clock shadows and broad shoulders and car keys
Dangling from their fingers
Instead of Captain America action figures

And
Slicked back hair like mini movie stars
Instead of wild cow licks

I get thrown off balance when I look over and see
Childhood in a time warp

Proportional bodies,
Thinner faces
But
With smiles still reckless

Except this time
It's not the innocent kind.

Nickelback dreams
written like wishes-
Creased over pages and
broken-book-spines
donated to used bookstores.
Pick out something new-
Smells like money
Smells like success
Smells like
somebody else's words in my mouth,
Hard to chew on
Hard covers poking
into hands used to holding
paper backs.
They weren't too fancy
but at least they were mine

Grief is far from straight

It’s a crooked, winding line down half of my heart, half of my lungs

Permanent scars that make it hard to breath sometimes.

I hate that you’re fighting to catch your breath now, too

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.

Ghosts love stories
They say

So if we are both ghosts
Does that make this a love story?

Or will we drift apart back to old graveyards
Where the endings are familiar

Says it right on the stones, don’t you know?

Look at this one: died of a broke heart

Is it mine or yours or both of ours?
I can’t tell.

I scroll through pictures of us in the mountains and I hear her voice so clearly
Written on a crumpled page
Years since she left the flower city
For the glitter kind
And I only shone because of my honey gold hair
Not jewelry or bright eyes or highlight on sharp cheekbones
“I’m lost and I only knew myself when I was with you, and I was only with you when I went outside so I’m going kayaking in Alaska. I’m sorry I let myself get so lost. I’m sorry I made myself too hard to find.”
An apology in vain

I had already forgiven her.
I forgave her the moment she left me barefoot in a field because
I knew her heart once
And I knew she had to go

Girls like that, they grow up half money and half spirit
Bound to want to taste what paper can buy them at some point
And me, always in the field. Safe.
She left and I never blamed her and I still don’t

She makes contact now
“How are you??”

Oh, my dear.
I am living out the dream I worked for
Cried for
Laughed for
I cannot ask for anything else
My feet feel good at the school I’m at, do yours?

I scroll through pictures without me
Click on the girl with her instead, before she went to Alaska to lose herself and find herself again
(She didn’t have to, I could have told her exactly where she was. In the flowers by my hand all along)
And all of these girls are so lost and lonely

Money in New York and parties every night and ten thousand comments
And still, they couldn’t escape it
Couldn’t escape what we all feel

You can see it in their eyes
It’s the reflection of glitter
Golden fear

Go stand in a field, I want to say.
Go stand in a field and take off your shoes and rest.

Pull me down
Farther, farther
Into the depths of the Earth
Pull me down, down, down
Until my skin touches the core, red hot
And then farther
Down past molten rock
Down to dust
Down to nothing
So that I may make myself once more

Well go ahead and box me up, I guess
The funeral will be nice and they will not say
"oh, but she is still living"
in the literal sense

They'll use it as a metaphor
instead of the rallying cry,
the encouragement

"but you are still living"

maybe I'll never die, at this rate.

So box me up in glass ceilings and
social norms

We'll call it the practice run

And let's go ahead and put "here lies a person"

So I can practice being equal when I'm dead.

The thing about women
is that we are taught to be nothing
Consistently
and yet
still, after all this time
We manage to be something

It's the oldest story in the book:

I thought you were mine.

I thought you were mine but I didn't make my move

I sat on my hands and studied the chess board because I thought I was the queen

I didn't pay attention to the pawn working her way across the board

It's too late now.

I don't have any more pieces to stop her.

The worst part is, I think she deserves you more

That little common pawn Queen

I think she deserves you more than me.

Like I said, the oldest story in the book

Older than the knowledge that I wasn't necessarily born to rule.

Red boys worth blood
listen to the things they can’t hold in their hands
like sun and color
and the supposed shoes of a Cinderella girl
who was really their sister
and didn’t run away from them,
just the angels in the front garden

Burn the house
Burn the garden
Take the gut-punch
Grab the slipper

The watery grave she finds herself in-
tears shed by parents over the rejection of a suitor

The boys are only red because they faithfully cling
to Cinderella’s heart.
She gave it to them for safekeeping

Oh the things that brothers find themselves holding
past midnight.

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.