You told me you were suicidal
and I wanted to tell you how much it hurt to be a person
how my skin and bones ached to part of infinity a never ending spiral of never again having to say
“I’m sorry”
after coming out
You told me you were suicidal
and I wanted to tell you I wasn’t qualified to give advice on the matter of life and death
I have seen too many bare mattresses to understand
what home really is
am I just an ever changing notion of how a problem student might look like
some futuristic idea of the changing tides
being pushed and tormented by the moon
no I am not qualified to tell you to keep living
You told me you were suicidal
and I remembered the page in my ninth grade diary saying the same
followed by the words
“I don’t know what my name is,
not the one they gave me,
but the one I’m going to give myself
The one they won’t put on my grave,
but the one I’ll put on my heart,
the one God will call me in heaven
and the one mom will deny I have.
I don’t know our name,
and I think I want to die.”
You told me you were suicidal
and I typed and retyped messages,
playing in my head the ways you had already left
and didn’t want to make this one about me,so  I said
“Call a hotline”.
You told me you were suicidal
and my bones ached remembering the pain of what it is to be a person.

When I was fifteen I listened to a religion teacher say
“Maybe” there should be a queer holocaust
and I pretended it didn’t hurt me,
the same way I pretended when she said
trans people mutilate their bodies by becoming who they are
when she misgendered Leelah Alcorn
when she called asexuals freaks of nature
when the other queer kid got sent to therapy
for having the audacity to even try to start a GSA
and suggesting that maybe everyone deserves to feel safe here
and my friends
think I’m overreacting
“It’s not a big deal!”
“Get over it!”
“Stop trying to be so special,
you should be expecting it at a Catholic school,
this is just what religion is like”
Is it?
Head down
Head down
Voices down,
you can get expelled for disagreeing with the archdiocese
Whisper in the hallway
about all the girls with pregnancy scares
who believed that
love
was the best contraceptive
Is that what Jose Gomez is teaching us?
No it doesn’t hurt
to watch my friends cry
about boys who yell “******”
down high school hallways
No it doesn’t hurt
when my friend asked me
“what would your kids even call you?”
No it doesn’t hurt
to be like this
Or at least
I can pretend it doesn’t

If you don’t know the answer
it’s C
If you don’t care if cheating is immoral anymore
it’s normal
If some days the idea of shoving a pencil into your flesh
is tempting
                 It’s high school

Welcome to the flawed world
of unhealthy habits and competition
a parade of bent and folded bodies
we show off
graphite scratched skin
Future leaders stand like statues covered in graffiti
among ripped canvases and unfinished art projects
Waiting to be beautiful

Friend groups made up of alternatively
muddy and magnificent water colors
of scars and secrets they hide from their parents,
drawn on their skin,
settled in the cracks of broken frames
hiding wolverines under shattered glass and splintered wood

It’s not beautiful to be broken,
but outside of here, it’s beautiful to be alive
and be what you are
so turn scars into lightning bolts
and let stories drip down your chin in vibrant colors
you can’t see

Our best traits
are tattooed on our backbones
hidden under layers of weather-worn skin and clothes
        maybe we can't see them,
but they keep us standing up

So maybe it is all a competition
or a lie
or maybe we’re not real at all
But maybe that’s okay
Because neither is any of this

I know things will change
     religion class will end
& four advil and 6 hours later my headache will go away
I will get the fire back in my veins
write again
feel full again
I will start taking credit for my poems
Everything will fade back into background noise
    & I will sleep again
My prayers will stop sounding rehearsed
& my lists won't only consist of
                       "Get out of bed"
I'll talk to my dad
   and angry tears will stop burning paths down my cheeks
I will read again
           and rest with the lights of
Stop flinching so much
             and it will be okay
                                         Again

I scrape away layers of my skin on my legs
with tweezers, often
until blood is drawn,
trying to yank off the imperfections
I feel,
blistered and pocked with red scabs
I will later
pull off,
a physical manifestation of what I want to do inside
littered with imperfect
feelings, thoughts,
digging and shredding into perfectly smooth and pristine
layers of emotions and ideas
ripping up what is good into an incoherent mess
trying to reach the dark spots underneath,
I can’t see them, but I know they’re there
lurking and waiting to come out to the surface
the agitation rises
if I can’t get something out,-
I need to get something out,
smalls whimpers of pain,
hardly noticeable,
until finally a deep exhale
it’s over.
Legs riddled with bleeding holes,
aching but content,
until tomorrow.

One day I'm going to be old and droopy
And your ears are going to be huge and hairy
My cheeks are going to sag and so are my arms
And you won't be able to move like you used to

One day I'm going to be grey and naggy
And your hearing aids won't work and you'll complain
My eyes will steadily stop seeing as well
And you'll never remember what day it is

One day I'm going to be confused and deaf
And you're going to be elderly with dementia
I won't be able to walk, but I'll crawl to you anyways
You won't be able to speak, but you'll love me the same

One day we're going to be nostalgic and cranky
And we won't understand our grandchildren's technology
We won't understand why these kids listen to such garbage
And we'll be forever together, in love with each other

Hold her hair back,
keep her shirt tight,
help me pick the lock
on her door tonight.

I love you Bobby Pin.

Being an adult means lying in the sun
until you're hot enough to take a dip.

It means skimming the water
with fine-mesh nets
to collect the floating dead bugs.

Being an adult means thinking about cancer,
and worrying over every sunburn-forged mole.

It means that the paranoia
we all like to call love
haunts your thoughts accordingly.

Being an adult means your two primary concerns on a summer day
are children could potentially drown and consistent doses of SPF30.

It means that you forsake
your own thoughts
for the sake of sparing theirs.