i've heard stories about hands and what they can do and how they feel different when the blood running through them pumps for you. how eyes--when the light hits them-- can move tides in their chest and drown the bits of them that had never seen the beach before that moment. how hands on hands touching arms nose to nose forehead pressed on forehead makes a stir in them only tornadoes have known; it's just destructive enough, in one constant motion, knocking down every dam ever built for protection. i'd heard stories about pulses and heart beats and tear drops under the sun. I heard stories. i've heard them. I've never started a tornado though. I've never taken anyone to the beach.

I beg you
granter of desires
aligner of miracles
throw him in my path once more

last night in the shower
the water was warmer than usual
painfully so, almost
it’s menacing attention was
nearly enough to make me shut it off
but the heat reminded me of human touch
i tried to turn it up further
but it just went cold again

luna, my love
my constant,
is he looking at you tonight too

1.When you walk, don't look in the shop windows. There's nothing really to be seen except a disappointment you've been hiding from and a sense of self you're afraid to feel. Sometimes you'll get curious, you know, and that's okay. We all slip up from time to time. Just remember those deviations from the plan will knock you right back to where you were. You will remember then, and you won't slip up again for awhile. Bring music, or have a song stuck in your head. Never let you mind wander.

2. While you're shopping turn around so you don't have to watch yourself change and struggle into the new clothes. Instead, just turn around to reveal your new look. Then, while ******* turn again. Once more, you will slip from time to time and think perhaps the worst is behind you and you can handle this sort of thing now. It's just you after all; the you that you've fed bathed and breathed with for your entirety. There's no secret that lies in your skin you're presently unaware of. But this slip will cause a prolonged stare, a staggered heart beat, and a couple sniffles. You won't deviate for awhile after. Pro tip: just ignore reflective surfaces in general

3. But if you must look in the mirror, use one that only reflects the shoulders up. Sure your face has gross, brown spots and plateaus all over but that's nothing an unmatched Neutrogena foundation can't fix. You'll feel pretty good. Pretty great actually, as long as you don't let anyone touch your face, or hug anyone's white shirt. It'll begin to feel like that's what you actually look like and your confidence will exceed its greatest peak in the past, before you begin to feel you're fooling everyone around you.

4. And then you'll forget all of these things and you'll go to college and you'll believe in love still--for some reason-- even though every single moment in the past 18 years has told you otherwise about its existence, and because you believe in this thing and you love to write and you love to love you'll start to believe someone could love you and this feeling will eat you alive when it never arrives
5. Soon after you'll begin to realize how mundane you are and how much you blend in. You're not that girl that catches someone's eye and they think about it for days at a time
5. You're the girl blocking that girl


6. So you stop wearing makeup because what's the point you know
If you can't get someone to care about you in a heightened, better state it doesn't matter if you look like your worst, natural you
7. So you walk in the rain and listen to mitski and don't care about the fact that your hairs getting wet even though black girls are supposed to care about that sort of thing
8. And you look in the shop window of that café and feel a sense of self you've been trying to avoid
9. And you start the cycle over again