Poetry is eating a bowl of tear soaked ice cream in an empty parking lot at 2 in the morning. Its escaping well needed sleep to google synonyms for heartbreak. Poetry is heartbreak. It is grief, misery, sorrow, it is making a playlist on spotify made up mostly of ed sheeran and Bon Iver. Poetry is pulling over to write because you finally found a line that accurately expresses the way your heart gives itself an indian burn at the thought of his name. Poetry is a whole stanza dedicated to cliche metaphors about your heart. It is losing his and putting yours back together. It is taking duct tape and staples and gorilla glue and seeing which works the best. It's finding out what's most durable, it is making you more durable. Poetry is looking up at the stars just to remind yourself that you're insignificant. But it is also learning that you are significant. It is holding your breath just so you can gasp for air. It is speeding up at a yellow light. Poetry is the yellow light. It is deciding whether you should stop or keep going. It is running with asthma but forgetting your inhaler. It is making it to point B. Poetry is finding a point B. It finding a reason to set an alarm, a reason to go grocery shopping or to do the laundry. A reason to pay the phone bill or put gas in your car. Poetry is opening a window after its rained. It is playing an instrument for the first time in years, it is catching up on a tv show that you forgot about. Poetry is making sure that nothing is forgotten. It is the minds magnifying glass. It is finding every crack and speck of dirt and learning to love them anyway.

Sometimes amputees can still feel a body part that is no longer there. They call this phantom pain. They can feel an itch where theres nothing to scratch, pain where there's nothing to hurt, they can feel the tickle of sheets, stretching across what used to be a limb. I can still feel your body next to mine while I sleep but I pinch my arm to distract myself. Phantom pain: noun. A sensation of pain coming from a body part in which the nerves have been destroyed. The first time you left, you gave me your flannel. The sleeves flooded my arms and though I could not see them, I could still wiggle my fingertips. For the next five months, I would wrap it around my body as tight as I could in hopes that I would feel something. But my hands formed fists and for a moment, I forgot that they were there. The second time you left, you gave me your body. Told me that it was all mine, that you were sculpted just for me, that we were apart of God's masterpiece and NOTHING would wreck this beauty. You told me that we were going to glue this puzzle together and frame it. Hang it above our bed. Now I lay in bed and I can feel your body next to mine. The third time you left, you gave me a kiss....after kiss, after kiss, you kissed me from head to toe, from finger tip, to fingertip, you kissed me so much, I forgot the entire english language, so much that my lips turned blue, so much, they went numb, so much that when you were kissing her, I could still feel it. I could still taste your tongue, I could still feel the outline of your ribcage, I could still feel the warmth of your hand curled around mine, you cannot feel mine. You did not want this body, you did not want this hand, this ribcage, this tongue, this piece of the puzzle. Instead, you wanted a body that believed in what she could not see, one that you could lay next to, one that you could be sealed with. One that would fit in a **** box with you, one you could send off to heaven with free shipping, you wanted a body with scriptures tattooed across her ***, because mailing costs one questionable ***** stamp. One that would pray with you while making love, a body that you don't have to repent for, a body that god would be proud of. I woke up this morning and next to me was an imprint of what I once believed in.

As his mother tucked him in and gave him a kiss on the cheek, he reminded her to leave the door open. Hands stained with cotton sheets and nursery rhymes still stuck in her teeth, she smiled and said "the door is always open." He continuously assured her that it wasn't the dark he was afraid of but the hall light stayed on until he was 9. As he blew out pink candles on his 10th birthday cake, the echoes of mocking classmates burned threw his lips. He thought maybe thats what it felt like to sin. The same feeling he gets when he grasps the doorknob of a church building, the same feeling as when he kissed his first kiss within bare walls, the one that broke skin when he fell for live ash in the back row of biology class. The black lungs on display resembled his, only cigarettes werent the cause this time. The air between the two of them was so tainted with moral, it became toxic.
A melody of slammed doors played on repeat, screaming for repentance but no one seems to recognize this hymn. The chorus won't harmonize. Jesus loves me this I know, for my mother told me so...WAIT. Thats not how its supposed to go. Paper cut tongues slurring same *** through biased mouths is not a religion. Protesting through scriptures against thy neighbor, he locks the door. And the church is silent.

I should've known you were a bad idea when I asked you what you wanted to be when you grow up and you replied with "surgeon." You failed to inform me that
your interest was in cardiology. You said that you'd like to travel someday. Though your idea of exploration wasn't a foreign continent but a trip through my four chambers. And when you hit the edge of my pulmonary canyons, you wouldn't spare me the anesthetics. I asked you what your favorite color was and you told me it was red. Little did I know, thats because it reminds you of open chests. I should've known you were a bad idea when you took me on a date and only kissed my neck. Said you liked to feel my pulse on your lips. Said it made you feel alive, knowing I'm not dead. I thought that your obsession over my veins was cute. I never thought that your tracing and analysis of my wrist was in any way abnormal. Or that when you squeezed them too tight, it wasn't just cause you like the color purple. I don't really remember our second date, maybe because I was high off of your intoxicating breath. But I do recall your finger tips dancing across my sternum. They must've missed a step because It didn't feel too graceful. Your nails acted as scalpels, each misplacing a rib like an unsolved jigsaw puzzle. tearing apart every piece of certainty, you've always liked surprises. Thats something we have in common. But when you began splitting each artery from the center of my beating image, I couldn't help the shock. The art sketched into my cardiac muscle didn't appeal to you. A corner was missing and the edges were faded and you weren't interested in piecing me together. I think you were hoping for a better picture.

I wasn't even a day old when I was first injected. Into my arm spilled the life I was bound to have. My mother watched my eyes fill with hope as my body filled with youth through this tube I grew to know all too well. I had come to love the sting through my veins and the taste of not tasting. The punctures in my skin felt like a fleece blanket but no one second guessed why they didn't scab over when it was no longer raining. And no one thought twice about the times I stomped on pins and needles hoping to feel the comfort of that old fleece blanket. All those fake coughs and stomach aches just to be wrapped up in something softer than tums and motrin. Do you know how it feels to be cold in the middle of June? To walk around with thick fabric draped over your shoulders like an invisible cloak, nobody saw the bruises. Well sometimes I get warm and I toss it off like I invented the throw blanket. But as soon as I reveal my purple skin, the surface begins to boil and I can feel myself evaporate. I can feel the division of my cells as each particle tries to escape. Piece by piece, my body is trying to break away, I need to get away. But my only safe haven is stuck in the syringe thats triggered my decay. Nirvana bullets shot through my veins and as I melted into a blank state, it told me I'd be okay. When I began to shake, it told me I'd be okay. When my body ached, it told me I'd be okay. When my skin started to wash away, it told me I would be okay.

Growing up, I always knew something was off. We didnt pray or have "family home evenings" and we certainly weren't included in block parties. Our family was different, sure. I was scolded by neighbors for displaying my shoulders and was constantly interrogated about my bruises. Excuse me if I resemble a peach. Despite the crude remarks and concerning looks, I never considered myself to be anything other than normal. Kids would ask me why my family is an assortment of colors. Similar to a fruit basket. Yes, my sister is blonde and yes she has blue eyes. No, neither of my parents do. My brother is not Hispanic, and no, neither am I. Not that its any of your business. They call it a broken home but it never seemed broken. My brothers got two Christmases and my sister got yearly vacations so how do you call that damaged? It wasn't until later that I learned where that phrase came from. My brothers dad was always a kind man and he was nice enough to teach me the effects drugs have on a marriage. And he showed me that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. My sister, on the other hand never knew her father and her mother was just a story. Though all her life, she saw the man that provided her shelter as the man that provided her life but that was false interpretation. Her fair skin wasnt a recessive gene. The figure I call dad turned out to be great with fiction and I wish he still was. Because the girl that shared the same room as me doesnt share the same blood and you didn't care enough to share that with us. I still love her, of course. I'm just saying, it would've been nice to know. I may not know her last name but it seems to me, the only stranger is you. It wasn't right of your wife to take a bite off the forbidden fruit but don't you know that lying is sinning too? Who are you to tell me how to live righteously when my entire life wasn't right? You always told me to see you as I see god but I never told you that I don't like religion. I'm not too bad with fiction either. I guess I got that from you.