You look
light into my
dreams
a whole mind
under this
ocean-tango
the
exit sign
the scents
entwined
ascending
your head
my neck
the pulse of you
sticks
burns
of fire
us
a
twizzler
of spirit
entering
with
transparency

…this is god, this could be
god
gaslighting
his mother’s
online
presence

/ I never
see
the right
cricket

Dear Self,

For you it is November 9th, 2016. Despite all odds, Donald Trump is president. Mike Pence, governor of your home state of Indiana, is his VP.

You are 17 right now. You were born into a world run by George W. Bush. You spent your whole childhood hearing your parents yelling at the tv, angry at the Texas governor in the White House.

You grew up in Obamanation. You saw months of “YES WE CAN” and “CHANGE” stickers going up, and a magnet your family still has get put onto your refrigerator. You heard your mother’s sigh of relief when Barack Obama was announced the 44th president. That was half your lifetime ago.

You spent the last year following the campaigns. You were not surprised by Hillary Clinton running again. You “felt the Bern” of the somewhat radical Independent candidate previously unknown to you, Bernie Sanders. You laughed off the wild reality tv star Donald Trump’s campaign.

Months went by. Bernie and Hillary were fighting hard leading up to the primaries. Republicans slowly started to drop out. Big names like Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Chris Christie left the race. Bernie didn’t do good enough in the primaries, which was upsetting to most of your friends, your older brother, and your mom, who all voted for him. Ted Cruz fell off, defeated, in May.

It was down to Hillary and Trump.

You followed the comments made at their rallies. On their social media. You heard a lecture about the election from Josh Gillin of Politifact at Indiana University over the summer. You won an award for an opinion piece you wrote on Trump. As the election day grew closer, you watched every presidential debate. You analyzed them in class.

Last night, you stayed up until 4 A.M. to see the results of this election. You sat through excruciatingly slow interviews, political analysis, and different predictions. You couldn’t turn away from the blue and red maps, the aggressively American backgrounds, the anxious masses.

The tired tv hosts were right, it was a nail-biter.

As Trump gave his victory speech, you wept.

You wept for the months you spent wishing this wouldn’t happen. You wept for the 1920’s suffragettes, for the descendents of MLK and Cesar Chavez, for the Orlando victims. You wept for me. The people I joined. The people who will join me.

I am dead.

You learned in your final moments that homophobes look like normal people. They are not all rednecks with beer guts wearing ten-gallon hats. They are more elusive than that. They can be dressed smart. They can have friendly voices. Familiar names and faces.

A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend killed you. Someone you live near. You might have passed them in a car. In the mall. In the school hallways. It was someone that people you knew,  knew. You probably could’ve gotten their Twitter handle if you had heard their name before.

You were killed in a city that VP Pence had once stood in.

People tried to learn about your killer. Were they someone you knew? Someone who just went crazy? Someone who couldn’t handle who you held hands with?

You were too young, the local news anchors said. Your school administration said. Your mom said.

Mike Pence didn’t say anything at all.

Your friends didn’t say much. They cried. They withdrew. They wore baggier clothes. They bought switchblades. They washed “*****” and “ladyboy” off of your tombstone. They wondered about joining you, voluntarily and not.

The school newspaper’s headline: DEAD AT 17.

No one thought it would happen to you, except you. You stayed up late at night, imagining your funeral. The first thing you did in the morning was practice for your wake. Every time you left your house, you were a dead man walking.

No one  believed this more than you did.

The news anchors said it was just one of a string of murders. People said it was an isolated incident. Your friends said it was a hate crime. Your mom said it was the worst thing that  ever  happened to her.

There was no question that you were gone, even when they found you- chest jumping. There was only one thing to wonder: who was next?

Not an if, but a when.

I hope the when is  never.

All my love- to you and everyone else,

Yourself

Maybe I'm not sick enough
Of sad, beautiful girls.

They wear misery so well.
Like pouty lips,
And blushy cheeks.
Swollen eyes,
And little mouth noises-
A siren's call.

I'm a ******* ******* at heart.

It's pretty sick
Of her
To humor me like this.
To let me be the joke.

Doesn't she know
That I would sabotage myself
Just to hear her laugh?
Just to feel wanted?
Just to feel worthy?

Just to make my skin feel bearable?

Doesn't she know
She's the movie screen
I project my affections
Onto?

Sniveling silver.

Doesn't she know
She's my one chance
At feeling normal?

At feeling anything at all?

Doesn't she know
I'm tired?

I don't want to wait anymore.

I'm pretty sick
Of myself.
I need her laughter
To drown out the silence.

I'm so uneasy alone.

Their wet eyes are interchangeable.
A series of lips,
Cooling cheeks.
Blue mouths-
And their captivating sounds.
I laugh.

I'm pretty foolish.
She's pretty sick.

this one sleepwalker
hung
our laundry, this other
left mom
a rattlesnake

some man was mowing drunk
mad about church, a recent batch
of runt
lightning, that baby’s
age

a mention
here or there
on the police
blotter, a chicken
scratch
on a giant’s
petition
to condemn
the church, kids
we lose
to birth

New pain is always the worst.
The kind you never knew you could feel.
And I watch you stew in it as I did,
But my viciousness came later.
My stone walls,
My excuses.
I had to be kicked for a long time
Like a wounded puppy
Years
In order to gain the fangs I needed to survive
But what that saved me from was turning my bitterness upon others.
Since I learned only in self defense
My kindness remained.
I sacrificed other parts of me-
Oh, too many, I sometimes think,
To avoid giving it up.
But it remained, like a secret candle I held in the core of me
Its pure light peeking through the bars of my ribcage
When my skin stretched over it like bleached canvas.
You...
I am afraid you're not like me.
I'm afraid you will not give up your love
Like I didn't
But neither, perhaps, will you defend your kindness-
You may not have known cruelty for long enough to realize
You need to.
What you need to fight for is not your survival, not your freedom from the tyranny of feeling, not even your choice to love a girl who treats you so cruelly
What you need to be defending with every breath is your decency, and your empathy, and your innate kindness
Because the world does not love kind people.
The world soils them.
And if you are willing to suffer for love but not for kindness,
You will curdle inside like cream left in the sun.
I have been where you are.
I have been hurt by people like her
And by people like you
And what I have found hardest out of all the things I've survived
Was surviving with KINDNESS.

Survive with kindness,
I'm telling you,
Or your work will be
Wasted.

That's what the voices in my head told me every time I set out to make some kind of statement in an antiquated form that would most likely be overlooked by every one of my friends.

But with beer and vanity and pigheaded persistence,
I managed to ignore them.