his name was surprise. as in surprise i could find it
within me to love someone so much that their smile was
engraved into my mind at 3:02 pm when i was mindlessly
staring at a window that reflected a world i did not
find any beauty in. the overwhelming desire i had to not
only love but to be loved was so staggering that it shocked
me; i know because i can still hear my mother's yell as i
dropped a glass plate on the floor when i realized that
i had allowed myself yet again to fall into another person.
my mother said i was lucky that i didn't cut myself with the
glass but all i was thinking of was the contagious laugh i
knew you would utter when i told you this story.
[you did laugh by the way, your chest rumbled and your cheeks
were so red they reminded me of wine on a white dress;
you put your hand over your mouth to cover the slightest gap
you had between your two front teeth and the happiness
on your face set my veins on fire]
i say that i fell into you and not that i fell in love because i
do not believe it is possible to fall into something so
deep and electrifying and morose and survive. i do not believe
it is possible to fall into love as if it were an ocean and it
wouldn't swallow you whole; as if love was some kind creature
that let you swim in the whirlpool it inevitably created. as if
someone could possibly fall into love and not drown as it
mercilessly threw you screaming, begging to be saved. i do not
believe in falling in love because i do not think i could ever be
one of those lucky people who are washed up survivors of
hurricanes so frightening and beautiful you chase it without
knowing why. i am disastrous enough to drop glass plates on
floors to see you smile but not cataclysmic enough to stay while you
try and do the same for me. so when i told you months later that
i was irrevocably captivated by the dimples of your smile and
you furrowed your eyebrows curiously, trying to figure out how to
let me down gently, i already knew the words you were going
to say. we joke about it now, it seems to be an unwritten rule that
you will ignore the wince on my face when you talk about your
new girl and that i will ignore the fact that your favorite of my poems
are the untitled ones written about you. i say that i do not miss your
arms around my waist anymore and it's true, your hugs have become
quick and reluctant so that you do not give me any false hope. but
there isn't any hope left that hasn't been dried by bitter insecutity
and a stubborn need of mine to move on.  i don't miss the way
your endless mood swings affected my day and
i don't miss the way you used to call out my name, joyfully and
excitedly  i have simply forgotten about old conversations
and unfulfilled promises and i have a feeling you have as well.

[forgive me though, your name still slips from the ink of my
pen onto this secondhand journal from time to time. simply for
the sake of writing.]

(h.l.)

They stand tall and smile beautifully,
any gaps between their teeth is held together by
glue called fear of what could happen if they are
anything but perfect. This glue, it is strong and sticky
and unbelievable expensive, it costs both your pride
and your happiness
[but it's okay, because both would've been taken
anyway. This is America you are a girl and you are a
shade of black so dark it blends within the moonlight.
the skinny twig girl in your class will call you a slave and
you will bite back the salty and sour response threatening
to spill from the back of your throat, that she is the color
of cafe con leche left on the porch and dried too long from
the burning sun of the Caribbean sky; and when she and her
white-washed friends laugh you bitterly think, wow there's no
difference between her and every other ****** here.]
They are gorgeous. Lips so red they remind you of blood at
a nurse's office. Stomachs so toned you want to scream that
your color is not a trend, that your milky white and yet charcoal
black skin with small bumps easily mistaken for traffic signs
with how easily their colors change is not a beauty status. your
skin is not pretty. It speaks an oppressed language with eons
of history behind it like your great grandmother's blood that was
shed onto the white man's land after he conquered something so
precious it could never be given back and you carry that with you,
within the stitches of glass cuts you forcefully made onto your
black skin, sickeningly thinking that you weren't good
enough because you aren't them and inside the skeleton
of your body is your grandmother
and she was a warrior in her own right and you carry her within you
and inside it not something middle school girls can laugh at.
it not something bitter old white politicians can mockingly ridicule
and sarcastically apologize for. it is not something that a boy,
years later at a frat party can try and belittle,
as if saying you are pretty for a black girl makes you feel better.
your great grandmother's soul and the woman before her give you
that milky white and charcoal black skin that can only be described
as the sky at midnight, when everyone else in the small town
you live in is asleep but you are awake and it is beautiful.
it is a hurricane with an infinite amount of water,
it is warfare at it's most addicting point and it is cataclysmic,
and they have no right to spray the dark color of the moon
onto their skin and pretend that the sun does not exist
until it is advantageous for them.
They are pretty.
They are beauty.
They are white,
and you with your Dominican kinks and sunburned skin
are not and this is something that now you do not like
but within time you will come to love.

she** is thin and wiry and so unbelievably charming it
is hard to believe everything she says is not straight out
of a 1980's movie that changed cinematic history
because for once the girl asks out the guy and I am just
a shattered home left battered after a hurricane

she is a ghost and I mean that in every sense of the word,
when she left I felt my brittle bones collapse
inside of my sunken body as if it were a cave
and like acid I dissolved myself into everything
as a distraction to try and forget her but
she still haunts me with her smile and her laugh
and when I sleep I find myself imagining her as the shadows
created by the moonlight

her love was toxic. I know this because her voice still
shouts at me to do things despite the distance that has
grown between us; when I met her I was in a bad place.
I needed someone to be there and she was. she was the
only one who was ever there for me; it was unhealthy and
cataclysmic but she was there and that was more than enough
but then my tears started making her happy and my
anxiety gave her strength and I told myself she wasn't a
problem; until I realized I couldn't distinguish who I used
to be before I met her and she still makes her way into my
life at times but I have found calling her by her real name
scares her. it shows her that I know the mask of deception
she wears and that I am no longer afraid. my therapist asked
what I used to call her, before I knew, I said a friend. I know
now who she truly is and the word still tastes like iron in my
mouth. Depression.