It started in the burning starlight




There was nothing in me. I was new and everything was naked.

Memories carry with them the heavy weight of another dimension.

Manipulate

He put the tape over her mouth. And I shouted mom's name. “mom”

My lips go dark. Silver and stuck. My face is small. Only one piece of tape for nose and mouth.

Manipulate

Every window bursts open and the anger creeps in.

Little  brown eyes go black. My body falls and the room siezes. Each frame of the shot vibrating, camera lens cracks and breaks.

My eyes are new, in a big brown body, with strong arms and fast feet.

MANIPULATE

fist for fist. Tape peeled back by revenge. And nothing sleeps right.




Somewhere else there are stars and you don't have to live




Could I be so naive...memories slipping through my fingers like pebbles. Through my tired, fading fingers.


Destroy

I feel breath. Whispers remind you that you cant be persuaded. Hands remind you that you can't fight back.

His lips making shapes in the dark, undoing buttons on child sized jeans.

Destroy

Overzealous heroes charge in and their fists build walls of bruises around would be abusers.

Maybe they save others...maybe overzealous heroes burn it all away.

DESTROY

And then no one gets hurt. Because nothing exists when it's ashes and bone.

But who am I if I believe memories can disappear…

If I refuse to accept the way they lurk in the shadows of my skull.

If I refuse to acknowledge them they grow.



Sunswept, copper sky. The moon sits waiting at the edge of the horizon



There he is. Big brown body like nothing id ever hoped.

Moving in and they can't see.

Repair

I feel comfort. Longing for that in my own skin.

I feel safe. Longing for that in my self.

Repair

Parents stinging child. Words biting the neck.

Poison lingering in veins. In memories.

REPAIR

But it's okay. He says he's been here before. Savior of the nightmares, i know him.

I sit in the backseat alone, waiting for the conversation to end. English to Spanish. My weight. I'm too big for someone so little.

He rubs my head and says it doesn't matter.

The hand is light and rough. Thick. Familiar and strange.

How could I become him...how could I be so incomplete.



It ended with the scorching moonlight

What did words look like before poetry…
They felt effortless, like none of them had points and sharp edges that hurt

None lost themselves inside of me, buried in the deep hollows spreading from my feet to my shadow.

What did anything look like before poetry?

It was beautiful, passing and fleeting and instant and beautiful…
Now its still beautiful but I cant seem to capture it…

Before it was as easy as a picture…
But now each image sits in my mind, replaced by letters and words and the imagination makes dull grey pages of black print out of blue and white mountain peaks, shimmering frosty snow glinting with the sun the snowflakes catch on their tongues. Nothing looks like this anymore...because it needs to be words.

I want to look at my pages and see portraits painted with loving hands, tortured and weak and passionate.

I want to hear that acoustic guitar, those nylon strings plucking upbeat and fast, strumming to a spanish melody trying to cover a southern diddy slathered in bongos and an old voice singing hard to here comes the sun, cause its alright!!

But big fingers slip so callously over pen smudges in notebooks. I instead focus on the smudges. My eyes drawn to what I can only grasp when theyre closed. Ears hearing sounds Ive lost inside the pages.

What did words look like before poetry?

They werent...they didnt.

I want to write this letter to the being who finds my soul in the next dimension.
I want to ask you not to judge my whispy floating energy orb
Not to leave me at the cosmic stoop once you see my weakness untethered.

In the physical form, they dont tell you what youll carry. How the people who have held your hand and the ones whove smacked it away will change you.
You find most people in the middle of their own battles, and you sink into them if they allow it…
And they never tell you how this merge will change you.

Do you find this little soul so disgusting? Because Im starting to change my mind about it after all…see, these bodies are more than vessels. I want you to look carefully at the soul in front of you. Each mistake like a solar flare, erupting on the surface trying to escape. Each regret burning to get out.

My little soul cant wait to rid itself of all the things Ive known.  
But its funny, the hurt others can inflict on you makes you more...you

And your soul follows after its pain,

follows for something to let it know theres more than this

Do you see my little soul here?
Bright as any sun in the drifting wide sea.
Full as the vastness of us all.

My little soul may not be as hollow as my little heart. My body lies away and away and here is this soul,
This soul for you now that is full of more passion than the cosmos could take from it.
Erupt this soul, burst it in to the open and watch what wonders I know.
Dont take this little soul for what you see,
For inside there are mistakes fighting to get away, being burned into fuel by a soul who has taken so much and will take no more.

My little soul...this verse is for you.
Because for you the only thing now is eternity.
Until my eyes close and the dirt rains down, all i will have is my memories.
Bound by trusted hands, bloodied by lovers,
Touched by the unfeeling, felt by those who felt too much.  
You will not carry these burdens with you…

But neither will I. This verse is to remind you that I am only a person,
But inside me is burden, purposed with desire and coupled with passion.  

Dont judge my little soul for what it looks like. Because its nothing like me.