It’s weird how much
I love times new roman and
how the sight of Jordan Maron playing
below Zero Subnautica makes me clap and grin.

I’m the nonbinary watching youtube to sleep
and to feel comfort. I find the sound of the Misfits Podcast
soothing. The first degree black belt resting on my shelf
means I worked seven years, but when I learn Jiu-Jitsu
I’m up against the wall, stuck in another corner.

My closest friend group full of a bunch of LGBTQ+ and
mentally ill kids, from transgender to bisexual, from depression
to panic attack disorder to separation anxiety. We’re all just trying to survive.
Living comes later.

I’m writing a poem to express who I am, is
this enough? To the heart of me, the soul,
or whatever you want to call it.

Does the horse tattoo I got three weeks ago,
on my left shoulder blade or the way I fold my clothes
in my suitcase tell you? How about the green of my eyes,
that my best friend describes as a soft jade with small streaks of gold,
the outer rim a pillowy chocolate blue?

I love the sound of acoustic guitar and the powerful choruses
thrumming through the air. Editing is always done on paper and
grammar is a learning experience. I go horseback riding every Sunday
with my campus horse club.

But this tells you nothing of my times, when I found myself
Alone, utterly without hope and trust. Or I could say,
I trusted that I was not enough and that I could never amount to anything.
But it’s taken me a long time to take back what was always mine,
and I’m fighting for those rights yet.

I need to wash my water bottle more,
I need to say I love you to my best friend more,
I need to… to…
Love Myself.

And maybe that’s what this poem is for.

I’m a castaway enjoying the rough winter seas
on the carrack of a late age ship.
Flotsam, flotsam, weighing back to a place
full of roiling stomachs and stubborn jaws.

Of waiting to fight and curling up under
a tale of adventure to escape the hurling words,
walking out to hide under stark snowy logs
fallen over, trespassing in frustration of
collected angers.

Pockmarked roads and rushed breath,
screaming in my head, lips ******* shut
wishing for the Shire to land
on my doorstep.

Stalking away, leaving behind,
My, maybe one time I’ll get there,
to rolling hills and bespoken not
against my nature.

“im human too,”
and my mother looks confused.

Breakneck words, racing around,
trouncing across the wooded tops
of long dead, roughened boughs.
Tongue deadened, heavyweight champion
without leagues to move around: breath famine;
the time of a hare loping down the barren barrow.
Sought out lungs, captivating oxygen in a symphony of
sanctioned Guantanamo iron poles.
Tense, rippling knuckles, wound round,
round the starlight of Betelgeuse
six hundred and forty two point  five light years
away.
“Away with you” patches the scabs and root bitten nails
of some lost keratin; peace—nought found.
Await the rush of overbearing insinuations
claiming now a dead solicitation.
Learning hath been done
and redone, a series of embittered eyes
collecting up images that retain singularity status.
One talk, one Breath,
It’s all bout
to change to—
something better than
the jacked up prices on petrol station boards and the lips will
no longer book it past the mind’s inconsistency, bereft of known speak.
A challenge for not the sake of self: saké drank: but for the
peace under the left breast.

They can’t make out the stars
on this moonless night,
though the torn curtains lay
stripped of willful ignorance.
They can’t see the green left in the stalk
of a dying marigold bloom
scattered on the floor between
shards of a broken vase.

It’s hard to find the seeds after
Autumn’s breath stills the dirt,
the day is night-taken and the
undying questions tiptoe around
the tapestry laid out, unbelonging
from the crushing grief it has
woven into the well cared thread.

The lavender and ginger tea steam
whispers upward, toward the popcorn ceiling
where the moonstruck wander in
tight knit culminations, songbirds floating around,
wilting feathers dropping as stones fall down
in unrelenting storms of chaotic speeches.

Tap tap tap on the fifth story window
hollering up from the snow frozen grass roots,
incoherent language sauntering around the table
at thanksgiving dinner, dim faces
stretched out alongside the turkey.

Somewhere along the line,
I stopped knowing
i was worth something.

I’m not sure where
I left this knowledge behind,
i have stopped looking.

Perhaps I might have noticed,
If the sun weren’t in my eyes
as I slept in dark corners.

No one else noticed it,
As I hoped they wouldn’t
and wished they would.

Somewhere along the line,
I stopped knowing
to be afraid of death.

And that is where the line ended.

They say "I'm not sure,"
and they know it's veritable.

Cluttered desk--hats and
textbooks and papers and
earbuds all askew, heart
pumping too quick

Sitting on a black plastic chair,
legs curled up underneath, eyes
flickering to The Latehomecomer,
stomach unsettled

"I'm not sure." of what?
head down, eyes searching,
mind spinning, lungs catered
like coffee at noon
"Everything."

Supplied lies, shaking hands
pouring chamomile tea into a
white cup, hoping for--
that too.

"Everything?" on their mind
is falsified and unknown,
twisted skin ruddy,
shoes all in a row,
nails bitten like marionette

"Anything." of confirmation
belongs to the stables
which blossom with the
stench of sweetness and
wild, roving insecurity

"I'm not sure," they
murmur, "what you mean."

Precipices are lonely business
and so are "People like me,"
Forks are steel but the
mind is molten
and rusted in decay

"dream of quiet," they laud
slick on thin ice of
the essay due tomorrow in
history on the death
of too many

Sunglasses are similar
to winter waters and
lightning spirals in;
they are in debt to
themselves, in depth of

"broken moments." that
clash and too much
to think
              slivers down in silver

carcasses of thoughts
"Okay, I can't help you."

"I know," filters out
behind lips of burning iron
"I never expected you too."
floats down the crowded
unfinished
                    street.

They're not sure of
everything and
I'm not sure of
me.

I know it's true.

He won't say he knows
what it's like to  
shudder in horror at
himself.

He won't say he understands
the frozen fear and inability to
control his own mind,
the unbidden beliefs that don't go away.

He won't say that voice
in his head, isn't very little
and he can't help but argue
against himself, who isn't really him.

He won't say that it's not
alright when the evening is dying in
splendid shades of soft autumn
and he's unable to see it.

He won't say he gets what it's
like to be frozen in the corner of the room
huddled in ball of silently screaming limbs,
eyes closed because it takes too much strength to open them.

He won't tell his friends when the
noise is yelling and freaking out
over a grade that has become his world
and it's stressful enough without them saying it doesn't matter.

He won't say
wouldn't it be nice...
to be happy?
Yeah, that would be.

He won't tell his friends
in blazing daylight that seems to single him out
that he wishes it would stop.
Please, make it stop.

He won't tell them
anything at all.