Dusk sets on the quiet desert
Eerie shadows hide behind saguaro soldiers
And sanguine striped snakes
Sneak back into the earth
Rowdy coyotes meet among the rocks
To cry at the moon
Who never cries back

The wind roams so freely through the desert
Stopping where she likes
To dance with the wildflowers
Or tickle the sun soaking geckos
She laughs as she passes by
And the sands chase after her
Begging to ever be so light as to
Keep company with the clouds

The mountain wraps his unfaltering arms
Snugly around the valley
A regal jacket of deep greens and browns
Laid across his towering shoulders
He lets his gaze follow the hustle and bustle
Of life in the desert as suns set and rise
From the place he has always been
Greeting each javelina and jack rabbit
As they settle into his solid embrace

The wind moves manically
Passing through the creosote bushes
With just enough time for a polite greeting
Before she rushed off to tease the birds
She touches every piece of her beloved desert
But she can never settle or linger too long
For fear of losing herself all together

The mountain feels his weight
Pressing so firmly against the earth
He faces anyone who challenges him
And he only rumbles with laughter
When they strike
But he begins to wonder what lies beyond
Where the liquidy sun shimmers in the air
He cannot abandon his post
For fear of crumbling into pieces of himself

The mountain cradles the wind
Slowing her down long enough
To warmly welcome her home
The wind tells the mountain
Stories of the desert

I am the queen
of a beige colored box
with a pretty paper lantern
and discarded ***** socks

My lover is
a magic man
with a tender, fragile heart
we bring together seamlessly
lives from worlds apart

I come from
a pass-through town
a state for changing pace
a place with concrete skillets
and a rugged kind of grace

My kingdom is a sorry sight
my lover makes me bawl
my hometown holds my heartbreak
But no one has it all

I thought about my life today
and all it’s little pieces
I gather up my favorite ones
and all my worry ceases

Sometimes I think I can feel pieces of my heart disappearing one by one,
starting from the center and working outward,
like dropping a match in the middle of an old piece of paper

It hurts
and I try to check the expiration date on my label,
but nature isn’t that kind

I think I get this feeling because of you
or, to be more accurate, because of the lack of you

The first time I felt my heart disappearing,
I found the expiration date on your label
on the top shelf of my mothers closet
it was all she had left of you

and it was all I had of you

there is no truth
when it comes to things that didn’t happen,
but of course I’ll always believe
that I took your spot like musical chairs,
there was never any room for the both of us

Some days the trees outside my bedroom window glow a youthful green
And spread pale yellow petals across the dry earth.

Some days the trees are dull and gray.

When a thin red string pulls our bodies close
And our breathing keeps a beat,
I know that I am me
And I know that I am here.

But most of the time it feels as though my story was written in third person.

Just before the sun rises, I want to beat him to it.
I want to clamber over the mountain top and illuminate my beautiful Sonoran,
Stroke the backs of lizards who await my warmth
And kiss the skin of sleepy girls.

Instead my bones crack under the weight of my thoughts, layering on like humiliating harmonies.

Sometimes the trees are gray for weeks.
I wonder if they’ve died,
And I wonder if it hurt.
Every morning I separate the curtains to check if they are yellow again.
I check every morning and I wait for the yellow days to come
Because I think there is also someone who checks on me.

I am certain that your skin hangs loosely,
draped over your bones like an ill-fitting suit
the edges of your mouth drawn up like
the arms of a marionette,
human in every observable way –
suspiciously human, carefully constructed,
a lump of deception molded into a
humanoid sculpture

i’ve taken empathy for granted as
a natural human instinct.
I cut off a piece of my heart and
mailed it to you, with a note that said,
“the least you could do is try”
but you tore it up between your teeth
and spat the pieces at my feet

I’ve always had faith in time,
believed that wisdom and control
are sitting on a shelf in the back of our brains
on a timer
ticking in time with our heart,
but I guess that doesn’t apply to you
because time is a man made concept
and your heart is an intricate prop

you are a piece from a different collection
than me
your artist painted with black and blue,
cold colors

Saturday night – date night.
Trace the cracks in my palm,
What do they tell you?
How long is my lifeline?
[deepen my smile lines]

Truth or Dare
How much do you trust me?
Try to be unique and beautiful –
What makes me more than human?
everyone looks for the same thing
in a different color
[truth traps with easy intimacy]

If I kept a book of my answers
To questions
I could build myself with words
[first, i have to decide how to answer]

I'll pick me up at six oh eight
For a date
[with myself]

It's really the suspense that keeps me alive
curiosity pumping my blood
because if i were to go to a fortune teller today
i could **** myself tonight

Loud music is silent, silent thoughts are loud.
Is that my heartbeat?
Or yours?
pounding in my ears
My skin writhes uncomfortably on my bones as if it doesn’t belong there.
My marrow craves you; my deepest crevice calls for you in a low throaty voice
I want to know how your skin feels
traveling up my body like your eyes do
I want to feel the way your fingertips explore me
Are they
gentle
searching
rough
h e  s  i   t     a     n        t
I want to know if energy flows through you
the way it flows through me
because my energy sits low in my hip bones
I can feel the vibrations formed by the whispers about you
My dents and depressions exhale your name into the atmosphere
I hope it will reach you,
I hope you can hear me wanting you

Do you remember when the light in our eyes was brighter than the light of the stars,
when we used to tell each other reasons that we didn’t believe in god?
Tonight the clouds closed their eyes, clenched their fists, and swallowed the stars.
The older I get the less the moon stays to kiss me goodnight.
Tonight I’m praying to a rhetorical question.
I used to tell you that the silence was one of the reasons I didn’t believe.
Being friends with you has taught me that the silence is the response.
I’ve learned that my prayers are selfish.

The past few months i’ve peeled you off of me like a layer of dead skin.
I left my fragile exoskeleton on the shelf next to the questions you never asked me and the ***** you never gave.
I know all the reasons you hate me.
They’re the same reasons I hate myself;
I don’t know if that makes it hurt more or less,
but I would rather rot alone
than be pluto caught in your orbit.

My jealousy is oozing out in purple ink and sloppy cursive
because my stained lungs have finally given out.
I stopped shouting at you when I realized that
no one has ever fully heard something that weren’t ready to hear.
You only ever needed one reason to believe that the sky was empty,
Because god looked back at you in every mirror you passed.
Tonight I’m praying to a perverted question
just to prove you wrong.

Sincerely,
–if you need me i’m right where you left me

Does it make you feel powerful to tell me that
I do not own my body?
Do you get satisfaction from looking down on me
from the pedestal you’ve clawed and crawled your way onto?
Tell me,
does it make you feel good to threaten me
with words that come out of your mouth so empty
but land on my shoulders so heavy
Tell me,
do you get high from the nauseous look in her eyes
as she meets yours, slowly trespassing along her body?

Does it sound like music to hear the tremble in her voice,
look like art to see her to resent her femininity,
feel like silk to touch what you have no business touching?

Tell me what it is.
Tell me what you think you can get from me,
what it is you think I owe you.

Tell me that it is necessary, justify your theft –
Do you feed off of dehumanization,
can you pocket the profit from her sense of security,
shelter yourself with their rights, their body, their life?

Where did you learn to value your impulses over her innocence?
Where did you learn to assert yourself where you do not belong?
Where did you learn to rip a woman apart piece by piece
starting with her dignity and ending with her self-worth?

Tell me,
what does it feel like to own your body?

No, not all. but enough.

1) I am afraid of silent waiting rooms because I’ve never learned how to be alone with myself.
2) I am afraid of not being good enough because I’ve been told that these days, good isn’t enough. 

3) I am afraid of still being on the first question while the rest of the class turns their exams in.
4) I am afraid of walking to the bus station too slowly, and having to desperately sprint at the end to catch up.
5) I am afraid of indecision. The only thing worse than making a wrong decision is being the coward who didn’t make one at all. 

6) I am afraid of being lazy, so lazy that my suicide will be a pack a day and an unbuckled seatbelt.
7) I am afraid of how fast you are going, and

8) I am afraid of you leaving me behind.

9) I am afraid of being weak – of taking twice as long to wait for the elevator instead of just taking the stairs.
10) I am afraid of failure; more importantly, I am afraid of those unbearable seconds of silence that come afterward.

11) I am afraid of believing wholly and completely in eternal sunshine because I won't have an umbrella when I need one and

12) I am afraid of asking to borrow your extra umbrella.

13) I am afraid of good-old-fashion bad luck because can it make the rest of my fear arbitrary anxiety. 

14) I am afraid of saying, “I miss you, I love you, please stay longer this time…”

15) I am afraid of naivety because nothing is ever said without a reason. 

16) I am afraid of overestimating myself because someone once told me you see yourself as ten times more beautiful than you actually are.

17) I am afraid of giving my love to those who do not deserve it because they will not give theirs back to me.  

18) I am afraid of wasting my time, because I do not have time to waste.
19) I am afraid of limiting myself. God knows there is always more I could be doing. Should be doing.

20) I am afraid of being honest. Honest like children. Honest like poetry.

My thoughts slowly slip through my stagnant lips with every exhale
My worries and my fears escape through my pores
The thick weight of responsibility dissipates, hollowing my bones.

I fill my body with breath and salt and sand and sun
I fill my body with breath until every neglected cavity is illuminated and
Every vital piece of me is enveloped in airy peace
I fill it until I am light enough to swim in sunlight
I fill my body until I grow large enough to be seen from the edge of the universe.

I am called, not by name, but by the grandiose water warriors that wage a war within the waves
I wonder to myself, are the crashes and cries of the waves of pleasure or pain?
Their tiny foot soldiers invade my quiet meditation
And I begin to defend my exposed skin against the grainy troops.

The receding tide seems to have slowed time with it’s leisurely pattern
Minutes and hours and days all dance past me to the beat of a nearby drum
And the ever present sun heats my body
Beginning with the soles of my feet and the crooks of my elbows
It seeps through each layer until my heart struggles to pump my boiling blood.
Through the comfortable darkness, a playful light jitters just above my eyelids
It taints the usual blackness, leaving me gazing into a flaming abyss.

An affectionate breeze bathes me with reassuring coolness
And kisses my burning skin with it’s gentle lips
The wind’s frigid fingertips awaken
Every pore, every hair follicle, every minuscule portion of my surface area
And abandons my mass as abruptly as it had greeted me

I am deflated, as seventeen years escape in a hiss through a gap in my teeth
My lungs collapse, with the sweetest sigh of relief
And releases my contents in a single


Exhale.

I am not afraid to die.
Maybe it is because
The effort of existing is
Expanding my lungs exponentially
And when they explode,
I will deflate
But I have come to terms
With the fact that
What goes up, must come down.

You wrote to me,
"Do you like being human?"
And I said,
"What else is there?"

I do not believe in God.
God does not believe in me.

I want to carry my mortality
Close to me
To hear it collide with the loose change in my pocket
To check to see if it is still there
When the sun trades places with the moon
And my father smells like coffee.

I like the feeling of
Smoke igniting my throat
Because then I can convince myself
It is only the tobacco
That is eating me from the inside out.

I do not want to be immortal,
The thrill of being alive is that
It is a privilege.

Why do you want to be God?
You will know evil,
My god, you will know evil.
There is no cure,
Not even you
Not even you
But that is okay because
Nothing is good, if everything is good
Nothing is good
Nothing is good.

Let me feel your humanity,
I want to feel
You.
Tell me, do you like being human?
Tell me, what else is there?

Poetry is subjective

Relief and escape are relative.
My relief is another's hell.
Some pour their soul into words
Like their body was made to write
Some must force themselves
Into the confines of a word,
Their brain oozing out the top.

Beauty is a man-made concept.
The worth of art
is one soul's opinion.
She digests the poem
As if it is hand made pasta
It slips and slides through her
And she appreciates the chef.

In my body,
It is garbage.
The gritty texture triggers
A gag reflex.
I mash the letters with my teeth.
I cannot force them down.

Poetry is personal

These realizations cannot penetrate
A being who has not been pried open
In preparation.
I am not you,
Nor are you me.
My art is not yours.

Maybe my whole body is a compacted lump of doubts and expectations, ****** choices, and lonely words at 2am.
Maybe that is what I am.
I'm made of ****-ups, uncomfortable apologies, and stolen bubble-gum *****, carelessly beaten into a
vaguely human play-doh masterpeice

It’s funny how I want to tell you everything,
and even funnier how many times i’ve tried to
only to realize you aren’t there to tell.

I want to tell you how hard it rained two days ago.
It rained so hard I think it washed away
a little more than my mascara.
I want to tell you that I was so high when you left
I don’t know if I said goodbye.

I want to tell you goodnight at 4am
and good morning an hour later.
I want to tell you that every time I wear that skirt
I was wearing when we met
I think of how much I liked the feeling of your hand on my thigh.

I know you aren’t here
but I want to tell you anyway
Telling you wouldn’t make you love me
but I want to tell you anyway
You are doing more important things than wondering
if our bodies would fit together
but I want to write this anyway.

Its a big deep breath.
a gasp
a chance
a risk.
Its an exhale.
a sigh
a relief
a release.
It feels so good while its happening
and nothing could penetrate my euphoria

until,
inevitably,
I burst it from the inside out.

The moment makes me forget–
I can believe I am silky and seamless
for a moment I am an eel and I can
glide–
its as simple as that.

But when I remember them,
my unmistakable talons,
they will tear my delicate bubble to shreds

Frantically I try to rebuild,
to put the pieces back together
before I let in the whispers,
but it is too late and I shiver in the cold.
The whispers are so cold.
so cold.

They climb and claw their way into my ears

I wish I could lay there under the weight of the whispers
and say the fault belongs to someone else,
but the longer I lay there,
the quicker I realize
the whispers come from my mouth

Inhale, Exhale, Repeat.
Close your bright eyes, they say too much.
Don’t speak, you can’t change anything.
Inhale, Exhale, Repeat. As if you are sleeping.

Stretch your body as far as you can.
Make it bigger, longer,
like you have spent your life in a smaller man’s coffin.

Be still.
Don’t blink, don’t part your trembling lips, don’t move your toe three quarters of an inch.
Be still.

Scream. LOUDER. Softer.
Scream as high as you can. Louder. You have to scream to save your life. SCREAM.

Stop.
Don’t Speak. You can’t change anything.

Look into your eyes in the mirror.
Keep looking, you can’t back down.
Don’t blink, keep looking.
Keep looking.

Blink. Blink again.
More. Faster.
Blink until you can’t see anything anymore
until you are blind

Stop.
Clench your fists. Grit your teeth. Flex your muscles.
Your arms, your legs, your toes.
Make your body tight.
Tight.
Tight.

Release.
Melt.
Collapse.
Be liquid.
Don’t speak, you can’t change anything.

It never felt like the first time.
The way your hands rested on my waist
Was so familiar
Your lips on my neck was tradition
There was never a first time
My legs have been wrapped around you since
You, and I, and the earth were indistinguishable star dust.

And it didn’t matter that I didn’t know you
Because I was so comfortable
When there was nothing to hear but the small stutter in your breath

And I don’t mind that you aren’t here anymore
Because in the darkness it’s easy to pretend
That clocks don’t exist
But right now with the sun in my eyes,
I can tell myself there’s a time and a place for everything

And it’s okay that there is so much left to say
That won’t ever be said
Because I can’t tell them how it felt
To breathe you in
Or how I couldn’t stop my fingers from gliding through your hair
It’s okay that there aren’t words to do our night justice
Because this doesn’t exist for
All the other souls to know
How my body trembled in perfect response to your gentle force,
These words are for me
So I can remember the shocking comfort of hot finger tips
On my flesh.

For a long time now, i’ve felt like i’ve been waiting.
To be let in on the secret,
To get it
To know what it seems everyone else already does. 
I’ve been walking towards the gap in the bridge with confidence that I will know how to get over it by the time I arrive
because I have seen everyone else on the other side.
but the closer I get
the more I feel as though i’m going to fall right through.

Sometimes I close my eyes while I walk. 
when I close them I can feel the entire daunting bridge disappear 
but as soon as I open them, it’s waiting in front of me 
and I will never know if it’s really gone when they are closed. 

But opening them to see where i’m headed makes me wonder
is someone responsible for telling me how to cross?
does everyone cross the same way, or am I being tested?
what happens when I fall through, 
for I surely can’t make it over.
why is it, that I feel such a strong need to get to the other side.
what do I expect to find at the end?

Mostly when I am afraid of crossing,
I consider that all the others who have already crossed, do not seem different from me.
if it was truly so difficult, they couldn’t have thought it so easy, right?
But every now and then, the ones who fell through, crawl from the shadows and creep close enough to whisper to me.
My body aches to run.
To turn around and go back where I came from
To never think about the bridge again
To convince myself that this is simply a vivid nightmare.

But it isn’t.
and if I know anything at all,
it is that one day, I will have to cross,
and that I can spend an eternity at the edge waiting for someone to tell me the answer.
to tell me how I can get over the gap in the bridge 
and to tell me what’s waiting on the other side.
to tell me what happens if I slip and fall 
or if I decide not to cross at all.
but if I do decide to wait,
eventually I will understand that no one is coming.
no one ever will.
and maybe it’s because no one else knows the secret either,
maybe even the ones on the other side are waiting for someone else.
and maybe, all along, there wasn’t anything to tell at all.