Her world revolves in such a different circle from mine.

The key to life is healing and creating. It's harder to do the hard things, for creating is more difficult than destroying. But most times the hard things bring better things.

That's what my mother wanted me to know.

I will never let you see me unedited.

I always want to put makeup on before anybody sees me.
I never let anybody read my unedited poetry.
I am terrified you will see who I am and dislike it.
I will make sure to package myself neatly into a box,
Perfectly ready for shipping and taped up nicely
Until I suffocate from the plastic wrapping.

I won't ever stop.

We are validation seeking suckers
Who are too blinded by fog
To see that we must validate
Ourselves.

Let me decay into this garden.
Leave me slouching on the bench.
I'll blend into the roses after a while -
That’s all my body is good for this year.

I'll nourish Earth as it has nourished us all
With our deep red blood and water-logged skin.
Leave me in peace, please give me silence.
Here, I can be sedentary in solitude;
Blend into the ground;
Feed the worms and heal the trees.

Don’t feed me anything more.
Don’t cover me with clothing.
Don’t sustain my slouching frame.
Just let me wane in the wilderness
Where my skin is cold in the dampness
But heated by the melty sun that will soon be sleeping.

This mound is where I want to sit
Exactly as I am.
If I am going to die, I will die in this grass
With a bench below my thighs
And my toes gracing whatever green
Grows beneath them.

Let me fly, when the sun finally sets.
When the orange pool goes away
Is when I shall decay for a better place
Where my spirit has no knots or tangles,
Where strands of DNA unfurrow,
And every skin cell slips into the sludge that is rest,
And I can stretch my sentiments out on a cotton cloth,
Dye the fabric with my natural colors,
And that is all that's left of me in your world.

Like flowers drying on brick steps laid next to a trickling stream
Is how I leave the earthlings behind;
The creatures that constitute the land we run through,
Like ribbons of bliss that always fight for oxygen
Then drop like dead flies falling from diminished clouds,
Like a clump of rain that slaps your skin to remind you that
Pain is a part of being.

Bugs will bite. Splinters will sting.
Knives will cut. Skin always splits.

But when you sit under rose thorns and
Accept that your blood is as red as their fruit’s petals,
You will see we all bleed and our blood is sweet for a reason, and
Roses smell heavenly for good reason.

My grandparents gave me a holiday card.
My grandfather wrote in it, "stay young as long as possible so we can watch you grow for a little longer."
In the card, they put a $20 bill for me to keep.

How ironic that they tell me to stay young then hand me the social construct of deconstruction; of internal combustion.
Part of being young is not understanding social constructs, like money, class, privilege.
Please don't hand me money if you want me to stay the way I am.

I truly do want to stay young, though. I want to stay oblivious.
It's hard when you hand me the world's struggle in the form of paper and tell me to stay happier for longer so you may have the privilege of watching my joy and be delighted for it.

Oblivious.

I just realized: I am in mourning. I am mourning the loss of my life right now.
A trans man posted that he was mourning the loss of the boyhood that he never had.
I am mourning the loss of a gender-free childhood I never had. I am mourning that I have to cover who I am. I mourn what I could have but don’t. I mourn.
I have lost so much time. For almost a year I have known I am genderqueer, but have kept silent at home. I am mourning what I could have had if the world had been easier; if the world had been kinder, gentler to me. If only the world could show love.
I feel my identity is unloved in my home. I feel it is highly politicized, dehumanized, unreal, not palpable in the air which we all breathe at the dinner table together.
I AM REAL I shout! See me for I am so real. Hear and feel me for my skin is true, my mind is true; I am real and I sit here with you.
I am mourning the loss of a childhood I never had. I mourn the loss of kindness I never had.
Please be kind. I promise I will always be kind.

In my arms, my dear child, you are not a political piece, you are not a distant figure - distant yet still held so closely in my arms and cradled like a child. There will be none of that. You are simply one whom I love, and I am yours in return.
Please love me for who I am. I am only human, I can only take so much.
I don't want to be your figure, I want to be your child. There is such a big difference.

Why should I have to prove myself to you?

I told you who I am and you still don't believe me.
I told you everything you asked, yet you still can't perceive me.
I tried my hardest to explain, my hardest to remain
Calm in front of you, to compensate for the truth.

The fact of the matter is that you still don't get it
Because straight people don't see things that aren't to their benefit.
I could shoot you down with my intelligent wit,
Describe to you my complex social fit,
But there's nothing that I could truly admit
To get you to care about me.

You will never understand who I am.
I am one who is neither a woman nor man.
I run from a box into which people cram
Themselves for no **** reason.
That box, to me, feels like treason.

If you only could open your ears,
If I could help you to pause all your fears,  
You could start to dim all those dark years
Where I cried over frustration;
Hanging myself from contemplation

Over whether you would still love me the same;
Whether I would still be there for you to love.

That terror has leaked into my mind.
That terror sits steeped within my eye.
It's permanently written in big and black ink
Etched up and down my spine.

Love me for who I am.
Don't push me away because you can't understand.
Please, don't push me away because you can't understand.

Sometimes it’s easier to close your eyes even when there is light to guide you.

Corrode my honesty and
Jab my heart out with a sharp, split piece of glass.
Stick it deep in my muscles and tissue and bones.
Hurt me so much that you don't want to cry anymore.
Darling you can't help who you are by breaking me;
I'm not your piñata.

You left your words on my lips.
I’ve heard this song before.
You kissed the ink, then you kissed me and left a stain on my cheek. It was like spilling tea on paper, leaving it more crinkly and stiff than before.
You felt everything through that ink. You brought life to it, nurturing the words you wrote. You tugged me into them and dragged my brain on the floor until I was bleeding and wanted to leave. You are a whole different person now.

Poets live two lives. One is in their heads and the other is outside of them.
Poets write their mistakes down in sorrow. They give you all of their love so you don’t make the same mistakes they did.
They love you deeply; a kind of love they often can’t afford themselves.

You kiss the ink as it sinks into a crisp notebook. You stitched me into your mind and bound me to your thoughts. You run circles around your own brain, sewing up loose ends in every corner, frantically organizing your mind.
You kissed the ink, then kissed me, and left a stain on my lips. It dried like a tomato in the sun.
Only the tears of a poet can leave such a stain.

Your love terrifies me.
The second you touch me, through words or with hands,
I solidify like a marble muse placed on a pedestal
To forever hold its pose.
A muse scared of being judged by its audience.

I'm afraid of your love.
I think I know that it is so powerful it could help me, and
I have grown too comfortable in my sadness.
Sadness and sequestration, they are my comfort zone.
That is why you are scary.

I get so tense every time.
Every time you offer yourself or see me for who I am,
Each muscle in my body turns to glass and I
Breathe in sharply before holding my lungs.
Why are you still here?
Why haven’t you gone?

Knives are falling around me and you
Hold a shield above my body.
Can I trust you? You trust me.
Can I trust you with my mind, though?
Because if I let you in and you let me down,
I will be shattered.

In your palm I could safely be held,
But I’m slippery and I know it.
Partially and insecurely I sit like
A crumpled piece of paper hidden under layers of skin.
I crouch in the fetal position to protect from any external attack,
But I can’t hide from myself.

My love, you are an unstoppable force.
The power of your big and beautiful heart carries you.
I only wish I were whole enough to embrace you.

Hold the rhythm in your palm.
Share the mountains we build instead of
Focusing on the rhythm we killed.
These shards of shattered glass dig deeper in our skin
And we can’t climb out of the ditch we have dug
So we may as well hold each other.

The world won’t stop spinning.
The sun won’t cease to rise and set.
There is only so much time left for us in this world.
Please, please bare with me.
I don’t want us to die.
I don’t want us to die.

I wish we could have lived while we were still alive
Instead of dying while our hearts still beat.
Our hearts still beat.
Our hearts still beat?
They will never be aligned but imagine if they were.
Share the mountains of rock-solid and
Dusty dry emotion we put upon each other
Instead of focusing on the rhythm that we could have shared
But shot down instead.
This is my pain with you.
This is how much it hurts.
God I wish it didn’t hurt.

I feel like I am burying my own body beneath dirt and pebbles and my hands are split and bleeding from sharp edges of the rocks but I must keep my head above the ground because once it is buried I will never return. It would be so much easier to just fall asleep under the layers of ground that will protect me from the predators who come to hurt me when when I am tired and asleep at night but I must stay awake no matter what. I must stay awake.

I'll unscrew all of my bones from each other so it hurts less the next time you start shoving me around like I don't matter.

Sleep starts with my toes, slowly consuming and spreading through the rest of my body. It takes its time to isolate every inch thoroughly. Every joint under my skin separates and pulls away from me as fatigue spreads from my ankles to my knees. My wrists and ears feel captured and bound by the darkness and peace of the night. I melt into the sheets beneath me.
After only a short time, just my brain is left floating above my pillow. The rest of my body has dissolved into the wind. I look around my room, and the universe has shifted just for me.

Your opinion shouldn't be more important than my reality.

This clock, hanging above me and ticking away, just reminds me how much time I wasted putting chains around my emotions and sealing a lock on them. I wasted all of those seconds, that finitely tick by, throwing away the **** key to that lock so that nobody, including me, could find it now.

I continuously cry over a life that I almost missed, and every time I do, I am glad I held on for who I am and what I have done today.
Please don't die.

Pick my body up off the floor like chopsticks lifting pasta and sit me in a chair. Glue the limbs that fell off back on (maybe accidentally put some pieces back in the wrong place) so I can walk again without toppling over like a stack of books balancing on a pea. I'm talking to myself too much.

Mother nature is the truest comedian of all time.
She saw my soul before I entered life on Earth,
And she laughed in my face as I was
On my way to your house today.

Have you ever thought of how the sky bleeds colors?
When the birds fly by, their feathers drop beautiful pigments into the clouds which cascade through rain drops into the city, and that is how I see color.
They fly everywhere, of course; my birds have cried every color there is. They change as my emotions shift and squirm like a worm. Never has there been only one color falling from my sky.

Soar, will you?
My colors are sore, and so are the birds which release them.
Release them, will you?

I heard of a girl.
Her pen was her sword,
Crusading the world.
She bled from her wounds
Echoing somewhere,
Crying from afar,
Not knowing why.

She wrote to gain silence
Somewhere in the city.
Somewhere in a city,
Her mind wrestled more loudly
Than the force of anger.
A butterfly prevented from soaring?

It was something she couldn't name.
It bound her wrists.
She could never breathe there.
She could never breathe.

So she rose from her seat and tried to leave,
But the floor beneath her started to fall,
And her heart was pounding, then the air was gone,
And there is no one else there but the pen  
so she bleeds.
She bleeds onto the pages,
And through her finger tips,
And lets the words cover her
like a blanket of unsafety.

Would she ever have the heart to escape?

—————

Earth paused to hear her voice.
It all stopped moving, and
The girl kissed the end.
It kissed her back as her sword fell to silence.
It was soft and easy.
But it was also final, and
She was not ready.
It hurt, coming so close.
She's still hurting.
But she's still there.
She continues to crusade
The pages, and the world.

She sat there
Tea in hand
Sitting in her room
Staring at the city
That boomed at night
And flew away each day.
With people who wept
And those who never could
She sat and watched
As the world taught her quietness
And Earth sat beneath her
Holding her warm and tired body.
She sat in that room
Thinking of the art
That the world has made.

The letters of the alphabet came in. They toppled upon one another, chatted amongst each other, and eventually fell into one giant pile at the center of her mind. They kept the child from sleep the entire night, seeming to ask her to listen to the shadows' story upon the ceiling of her room as she laid softly under the covers awaiting rest. The scenes on her ceiling were formed by lights of cars that zoomed away outside. She could see everything from under her blankets. What did the man in that last shadowy car do? Why did he weep as he drove away?

The painted man, covered in colors hidden by darkness, shot a quick glance at his own pile of letters in the back seat as he drove. They were different from the young girl's. They all shrugged against each other, grew weary from life, arms crossed and glasses falling down their noses as they sat. Fatigue stroked their heads like death does yours when it greets you into its arms, holding you like a parent does a newly born baby. "You have really done it this time," the letters said to him. "I know," he thought back to himself.
Snoozing and snoring, barely keeping the driver alert enough to finish his journey, the letters sat disappointed in him. Never again, he thought. Leaving it all behind, he thought, crushed, and crushing his daughter.

When you speak more with your poems than people these days, you know your mind is really more one with itself than another, and will be for a while. It has its beauty and is ultimately tragic, yet holds value and precious moments within itself. Leaving this place is difficult, but necessary when you near the end.

Sleep is calling.
She weaves your name lightly and tugs your strings like a puppet until you fall softly into bed.
She pulls you in gentle directions like the waves of an ocean falling right into place where they are meant to be.
My child, you will be fine. Earth is calling your name. She wants you to rest so you may awaken tomorrow when the sun rises and make beauty of her soil that I never did.

Your eyes alone speak oceans of words.
The currents and waves of your heart smash upon rocks in the middle of the ocean yet during all that you are here with me. You have chosen to be with me.
I see the sky in you, and within my own eyes, I hope you see a road leading toward the stars, far from Earth, shining brighter than the light of a child.
You hold the power to freeze oceans; they are under your command. I watch as you slow the crashing waves so I may discover who you really are in their movement.
Imagine the light of a sunrise refracting on your beating heart - a tune intertwined with confused notes yet a clear message of trust infused in your music.
We are both finding our paths. They each wind in twisty turny directions but the magnetic pull keeps us close.
My dear, we hold each other’s hands through it all, and I promise to never let go.

"I'm just looking for a home in somebody's arms" the person said. "I've been looking for it for so long, I don't know if I'll ever find it. There are no arms left for me in this world, and I don't know if I truly could trust anyone to be my home," they continued.

"You tell me you look for safety," I say, "but you find safety in uncertainty. That is the home you have built for yourself, and that is the home you will stay in until you decide you are ready to leave."

I'll give you the wind. I shall capture it in my arms for safekeeping and hand you the melting sun for the day you call upon them for force and strength.
My dear, this world has been crafted by us for ourselves. I handed you every tool and you carved the dripping stars. I cut out paper poppies and planted them into boiling soil with great care and honesty. We left the planet for our own adventure, came back to view its growth and creatures. This is our world, borrowed by humans and birds. They simply hold this land for now.
I know they will return it to us some day, when they are all gone and we are the only ones left. Then, we shall walk the bare soil and wait for it to heal; wait for it to grow again.
My dear, that would be beautiful to experience with you.

Nurtured to be a woman
They say you should be modest.
"Hide yourself," they tell you,
"Cover your brain."

My mind is bursting at the seams.

I am no genius, that is certain.
Yet, I've carefully stepped behind
Others' shadowy minds
Enough to know it is
A waste of time.

So, I create my own shadow.
She is my own and only mine.

"You can only be smaller
than your ego is large."
That's what they all meant
when they said: "be modest."
False claim.

I am so bored with my own writing at this point.

On my way to a far off village
I met a young woman,
With scars in her eyes and hands so old
Holding a precious clay vase.
She lived in a far away land of
Desert-like knowledge, and
Within that land were seven stories
Of three weeping children,
Each singing for each other's love
And the eternal peace of their mother.

Sometimes you can
be so wrapped up
in writing things down in
a hurriedly explanation
that you forget
to breathe within the moment.

It's alright to pause.

It's okay to forget your pencil
and listen to the stars when
they ask you to slow down.

So, I paused.
And I heard wonderful things.

I discovered the sky is beautiful tonight.
More so that I could ever tell you through words.

So, please...  breathe.

If I fall, will you catch and hold me tightly?
If I fall with nowhere to land and cannot spread my wings, can you take a moment to soften the world's edges and make space for me in your arms?

When you fall, I will hold you tightly with nothing but love.
When you fall, I will be there waiting to give you my hand and make space for you to heal when there is hardly any left.

When we stumble together, years from now, tracing the heartbeats and tracks of others so far ahead of us, I will guide you through the oceans and hold your heart closely to my own so you may never feel alone.
I hope you would do the same.

Little girl picks up the chalk,
Writes her heart,
Draws her mind,
Cries it all away
Before they can see.

Suddenly your mind is flooding, leaving the floor of your brain sopping wet and useless.
Drenched like a sponge that was unprepared for the tsunami you never thought would come.

She hurts sometimes, but she's fixable.
She just needs a friend.
Ze struggles to understand the world,
ponders it every day.
One can see hir wrapping hir head
around the universe.

She's a tired person,
running circles around hirself,
aiming for and missing the target
every time.
Until she eventually can't help but
fall asleep, where the answers
to her questions somehow
float farther and farther away
from hir tireless, resting body.

Grasp the ground.
Hug the Earth.
Protect the history that
Has sunk through
These layers of sand.
The waves of the ocean roll in.

She rages in her centers.
Storming in her own lands at the
Center of the sea,
The middle of the water.
There is every color within the waves.
Violet seeps through her Earth as
Yellow reflects from the golden sun,
Glinting on the surface,
Just hitting the corner of your eye,
Allowing the hues to
Flood your brain.
She washes over you and the sand,
Reminding you she's alive
And that you are alive with her.

Hug the Earth.
Grasp the ground.

Do you know why I love you? I love you because you see beauty when it is hidden. You recognize it because you seek it. I can tell that you love deeply and you are artistic down to your bones. Others could have gorgeous art of any form placed in front of them and they would be blind to it. But you could see the beauty in anything because that's who you are.