i am a wishful thinker
i make wishes on bones
that are not necessarily wishbones
break me in two
and place a bet
on my better half
i'd try & come true
if you wanted
yeah, i can be selfless like that
but in my head,
i am so selfish
selfish enough to wanna share my bed
with you
you,
with the bright spark eyes
and the catherine wheel heart
i wanna make you dizzy
i'm not a firework
but give me a chance to explode
i'll show you all the colours under my skin
swim through my blue veins
and turn them white
with your library smile
climb to my highest tower
and breathe in my clouds
that doesn't make sense
i often don't make sense
i wanna make sense
out of every corner of your body
i want to wear your frame
like a tailored suit
'cause around you
my sunday best is wearing nothing at all
but your lips & my sheets
i often sing songs for you
into my pillowcase
in the middle of the night
this bed is the arena
of me & you
i'm often echoing in an empty room
but once in a while
i hear you knocking
on the door
i always
let
you
in.

i am asthmatic
i found out that i have hayfever
when i was around 10 years old
recently,
i discovered i have a deviated septum
sometimes,
i think i wasn't designed to breathe
but it is you
who takes my breath away
when i see your face
i feel a blow to my chest
the oxygen is flushed from my system
my lips turn blue
but all it takes
is a smile from you
to breathe life
back
into
me.

when i think of your soft sleepy smile
looking across the pillow at me at 4am,
i wanna kick you in the throat
i hate you so much-
there was a time when your eyes
made my insides glow
you played me a thousand miles
while i sat smoking on your floor
but you have done more damage to my lungs
than any cigarette could
it's as if you held a magnifying glass
to all my flaws
and one by one
they've torn me down
there are times still
when i look at my body
and shy away
sometimes,
i can't look at my own face
but i am done blaming myself
you are a lost cause
your ship sank so low
the ocean floor can't hold you
let me say,
i would rather stub my toe
every second of every day
than see your face again
there are nights
where i scream "thank you"
at the top of my battered lungs
because thanks to you
i know
that i am worth more
than cigarettes
on your bedroom floor.

i
am like a second-hand record
my surface is scratched
and i have been passed through many,
many hands
the grainy silence between my songs
can be so long
and sometimes i skip a note
but when i'm under your needle
i play like an anthem
you
are so well dressed
it's as if the whole world
is tailored to your perfect frame
sometimes, it's almost a shame
to pull your shirt away from your skin
i wanna watch you fold your laundry
i wanna share a *** of coffee
and play with the food on your plate
but i'll never ask for it to be that way
and that's okay
when you smile my way
it feels like warm weather
you are the sun shining on my face
there are days
when all it does is rain
but everything needs water to grow
there is a tree in my chest
it's roots run down to my feet
and when it flowers i feel it
in the palms of my shaking hands
i hold them up to those rain clouds
because i don't want this feeling
to wilt and die.

did you know
after you spend the night
i don't change my sheets
for at least a week
until they don't smell like you
& i'm just left with a ***** bed
it's just that touching you
feels so rare sometimes
i want your hands grabbing my hair sometimes
did you know
i've read about 109 books in my life
some nights the pages would hold me
when someone told me
you were dating somebody new
i tell myself "they don't get it-
your sparks aren't like shooting stars
'cause they say shooting stars are dying
and you are so alive"
but, they probably do
it's okay though
because your smile is the sweetest library
i've ever seen
& all i wanna do is kiss your volumes
till i can recite the shape of your eyes
from memory
don't you know, i'd be so well-read
lying here
in my
*****
bed.

i'd confess all my crimes
to wind up behind your bars
watching airplanes cut the sky with their contrails
through my window
i lay on your chest
my coffee breath on your neck
you touch me soft like piano keys
my strings aren't in tune
but you play me like i'm a symphony
when your lips found mine
you left your song in my mouth
my chest is the vatican
bellowing smoke signals
from my highest tower
for the day that we met
i will never forget
the night you looked at me
like you were seeing me for the first time
you sent shivers so hard down my spine
that my rivers flowed over their sides
you make me feel like crooked trees
on the sides of mountains
your altitude was so high
and so was i.

this is for the queer kids
who are taught their ABC's
but not their L's, G's, B's and T's
for the Russian government and the I.O.C
who deny Russian queers their visibility
to the people who call me "******"
i wear your name-calling like a pink triangle
stitched to my sleeve
for the Harvey Milk's, the Christine Burns'
and every queer in between
to the allies who do more than say
"your sexuality is okay with me"
for the Jamaican trans* teen
who was murdered needlessly
to the television networks
who portray LGBT individuals positively
for the radical queers
the POC queers
the genderqueers
the queers who have felt excluded
this is for you
for us
this is a celebration
and an ultimatum
we are here
we are queer
& we will do more
than survive.