Admiration is a word that comes to mind when I think about her work.
The seamstress only has to imagine and she can create a masterpiece of herself.
With every thread, button, and hem she tells a story.
She represents herself with every outfit. Her work molds to her every curve and bump.
She can move effortlessly and not worry about a tair
or loose string.
She can create herself into exactly who she wants to be.

And then there is me.
Who has to fight every zipper,
glare at every neckline,
and gripe at worn out areas that have rubbed and tugged to try and fit
my untamed figure.
The clothes that disguise me only entangle me
in a world of self hate and disappointment.
The number or letter on the tag become scars tattooed in my brain of three words:
not
skinny
enough.

I remember when a boy in line during the 4th grade called me fat ***.
I remember when I was taken by my mother to a store that "might have things that fit better."
I remember looking at pictures of myself next to my friends and instantly comparing every inch of myself to theirs.
I remember when I looked at myself and thought, "maybe if you lost 20lbs. you would be attractive."
When the Seamstress looks in the mirror she sees a canvas.
A challenge.
A body that will fit herself.

When I look in the mirror I see a girl fighting to fit in her body.
I see those memories of hiding behind baggy sweaters.
I see countless dressing room breakdowns.
The seamstress must have harsh eyes.
She must have her own burden.
Her clothes may be her own, but is it all a disguise to hide herself too?

Dear future friend, lover, husband,

At this particular moment in my life, I am laying straight on my back on a hard flat mattress.
I am hearing the sounds of cars struggling to leave a parking lot with tired wheels and manly voices.
My heart is free for the first time since the last time it was broken, and I pray. I pray to our God that the next time is the last time.

Dear future friend, lover, husband,

I want you in that order. I want to know you and laugh with you and feel like I am safe with you.
I want to pray, dance, and dear God I hope I get to sing with you.
I hope I get to eat a full bowl of ice cream in front of you. I hope you stay around for what that does to me, and if you stay through that mess then you deserve this chest, these hands, and my feet.

Because with this chest I will ache for you.
With these hands I will reach for you.
With these feet I will walk towards you.

I have had too much hope and too little life to give up.
I’m sitting in Nairobi, wondering where you are. Wondering if you are.

Dear future friend, lover, husband,

I grew up thinking I needed you. I grew up believing only one love was true. I grew up believing you’d come and find me like a sleeping beauty I would be awakened when I met you. But I can’t wait for you.

I’ve trekked across the globe and seen the band of the earth. I left trails of myself in every place I was like bread crumbs hoping you’d follow the delicious path to me.

So take your time picking up the pieces that will lead you to me. I don’t want to wait for you and I sure hope you’re not waiting for me.

Dear future friend, lover, husband,

I hope you understand that I love you already. I have only a notion that you exist. My words stutter and stumble around trying to find a way to you.

Do not wait for me, but join me on this hard flat mattress, and make this night less of a nightmare and more of a future.

Could it be possible that I’m worth more than my ******?
When you look at me what do you see?

Because I am frightened by your eager eyes.
I am nervous at the way you so openly ask me,
“Are you married? What is your age?”
I pray in my mind that I’m just being naive.
Not every man is seeking to make you their toy.

But as I walk down the street, foreign tongues caress my ears,
Eyes poke at my curves,
Hands reach to cage me.

I am American.
I am white.
I am a college graduate.
I have a credit card.
I have a savings account.

But these things about me are not an excuse.
My skin may shine in the sun,
my belly may be well fed,
my privilege may make you jealous,
So hate me for my birthright,
But let me be free.

I am not here to save you.
I am not here to please you.

But let this be a lesson.
Let this interaction give me courage and hope that maybe you really do only want to talk.
Let my mind stop alerting my adrenaline to run so that when I need to I can outrun you.
Let this be a peace offering.
Let me tell you that I am American,
But that doesn't mean I’m a dollar sign.
That doesn’t mean I’m better than you.
It means that I was lucky.
Know that I am sorry.

I am not here to save you.
I am not here to please you.
I am here to be with you.

Like a fossil you have encapsulated yourself into my history.
Whether we like it or not, I can still feel your presence in my dreams.
Sometimes you are distant and we never quite reach each other.
Sometimes you are so close I can smell your breath again.

Like a cold shower in the dark, I feel you shockingly all around me.
Overtly aware that you are both here and not even close by.
I’m strictly aware of who you are around me.
But in the darkness I do not know what to make of you.

Like an A-frame hug, you comfort me from a distance.
The sound of hope is emerging from my lips,
But each time it’s left floating like a pebble to the bottom of a river.
The music we shared plays softly but I know I am the only one who hears it.

I could spin similes and weave a quilt showing what you mean to me,
Small memories and fragments of our time would keep me warm.
But I can tell that there is not enough for both of us anymore.
If you don’t mind, I’ll hold on to these pockets of happiness.

There is sugar in my hair.
And not that you care,
but I spent a good amount of time last night standing in front of my mirror.
When I look at my face, I see the history of hurt.
My pores are wide and full of dirt.
My eyebrows grow sporadically towards my hairline.
My nose is exposed to too much sun, and it has eroded over time.

So I close my eyes,
like pressing the refresh button
and open them slowly to see myself once again.

The glass reveals nothing new.

I watch my lips as they whisper your name.

I raise my hands above my head
and lean back on my heels,
tilting my head and grunting in frustration.

I return to the same face.

The problem is that I hide behind insecurity. I demand honesty but refuse to be vulnerable. And every time I want to slap the face I see in the mirror.
My insides scream out to be fearless
and to choke back the sounds
secretly hoping you’ll hear them
even though I refuse to free myself from this trap.
Your only fault is not reading my mind.
Scratch that,
your only fault is being blind.
Scratch that,
my problem is that I expect you to be all seeing and all knowing.

You are no god.
You do not hold power inside of you to release the bellows of my heart.
You are not on a quest to free me from myself.
All you are is a human,
with skin and bones and muscles that put all together
are a beautiful masterpiece of a dream come to life.
Your eyes are familiar,
but I hardly know what they look like because
I fear their gaze.
Your face brings a calm and confident presence,
but I hardly notice because
I am already picturing it with some other girl next to you.

Yet you break from the mold of the mess I made so many years ago.
You show me that you are flawed
That your pieces do not fit me the way I thought.
The jagged edges cut deep into who I am.
The holes release my insecurities.
I quickly plug them with excuses
And bragging of things I know I am good at.

Ants have a system of finding food.
The scouts set out, leaving scent trails.
As they find food, the others follow the path that smells the strongest.
The scouts return with a message of a prize, yet when the prize is removed they begin to worry and scurry.
The ants wander in the spot that once held promise,
confused and anxious.

I wonder if those ants feel insecure when they arrive and nothing is there.
Do they question their ability to find the food?
Do they wonder if it was there fault when the scraps are thrown away or removed?

You don’t owe me anything.
You never promised or told me words of hope.

Yet I feel like the ant that found a beautiful piece of food,
but cannot find a way back to you.
I am running around in my head,
trying to find my way to you,
but it’s a futile search.

It’s a pointless wandering of daydreams and conversations that will never happen.

Because I hide.

My face feels heavy.
The skin is bloated with too much stress eating and not enough sunshine.
Instead of fixing the problems, I try and mask them with sugar scrubs and pinterest remedies. I don’t want pity,
nor do I seek attention.
I earnestly hope you find yourself happy,
and I earnestly hope
I can accept it.

Let's talk about the letter x.
It's one of the weirdest letters we have in the English alphabet. It's a prized letter in the game of scrabble. It's a stumper for some kindergarteners who need to know that one word that starts with it to move up a grade. It's a symbol for a spot. Sometimes it's treasure, sometimes it's a target. Sometimes, it's a word. Sometimes it's a rating of a thrill or a cheap way to get off alone with some tissues. Sometimes it makes things extra small, and sometimes it makes them extra large. Or sometimes it's a way to describe someone.
Ex.
Like an ax to the wood we severed into thousand of splinters. I never thought I'd call you by that letter. I had a different future in mind. One with yellow green and white. One with your forehead pressed against mine as I pushed out creation. One with a chalk board wall full of poetry, lyrics, and sketches of light houses with suns rising in the background.
Now all I see is a big red x over all those dreams.
My treasure map is torn and burned and I can only see the target, but will never find the way to your heart again. My scrabble board is missing letters, and as I search for a way to forget them I keep putting down the letters to your name. I can't move on, like a child stuck behind their innocence and unable to comprehend what is next. I have to only imagine our bodies touching like those two thin lines on a paper. Intersecting like a comet to the atmosphere, colliding but burning up with terrible destruction.
My poetry doesn't have rhythm, and the rhyme has gone awry. All I keep seeing are ******* x's over every line I write. Because none of them put me and you and love together again.
The letter x is so strange. It's a weird thing we chose it to be a way to describe the end of something. One line going one way, the other a different way. But somewhere they meet and for the brief encounter there is hope that the lines will curve into love. But the lines have to move on, and so do we.

Leaving home is no longer exiting the address attached to my paperwork.
The walls that contain my childhood are a time capsule full of spoiled memories.
The bedroom where I prayed away scary monsters is now a skeleton of myself with transplanted hobby attempts by my mother.
The rearranging of furniture, the shifting of pictures, the emptiness of space and claustrophobic piles of clutter in the closets push me outside.
Outside, where the trees grew with me and kept me shaded while my imagination transformed the branches into jungles or utopian planets ruled by female playmobile.
My mother laments at the clutter and space we hoard while my father would be happy as long as his tools are untouched.
Leaving home is like entering into a comma, and every time I wake up I've lost another memory.

I’ve put this off for a long time
Not knowing what words would come to form
Hoping I could say something new
But it all just feels the same

You let me fall and didn’t catch me
But like a shooting star I’ll gleam bright
Falling hard and burning beautiful
This fire inside will soon be gone
And our love over before the sun
breaches the mountains in the distance.

I’ve been told that I shine
But it feels so lonely and cold
because this dark room is without you
And I have to burn to see how bright I can be
I have to know it’ll be alright
without you

No longer paired but severed at the seams
We fought and tore all hope apart
But you walked away first
Regret never on your lips

The bus rolls away without turning back
But I wait in the cold hoping it will
Knowing it won’t

The comfort of God is on both sides
No one right, no one wrong,
But it had to be that way for you
Perfectly divided and clean cut
So that you could justify the hurt

“You deserve” is a stupid term
“I want” is more acceptable
But it’s not enough to sustain
and apparently neither am I

Fear not, because I have not forgotten
All the times I held you crying
All the times I heard you yelling
All the times you said you’re sorry
And all the times I never believed you.

Don’t worry, cause I know we are different
Just disappointed that differences make divisions
And we are joined by only one thing now.
Jesus stands with both of us you see?
He knows, He loves, and He heals both our hearts
But how should I feel when you only take?
How should I feel when you’re only right,
And I am only left, to tell you,
“This is what I know, and I don’t want to let go.”
With ears far away, carrying my heart in your hands
You forget to let me have it back,
And I search for the day when I can be free of that heart.

Oh Lord make me whole through You alone.
Don’t let these broken sins and forgotten promises
Tear me from your Love.
Words Words, that’s all they feel like.

But in the depths of my soul I cry for God.
I cry for justice and patience,
I cry for humility and grace,
And I cry out for answers.

God will not answer me.

He will show me,
With a new adventure I’ll embarque,
Enjoying the journey, but will happily hurry.
I’ll hurry to leave and gather new millage,
Go up and down the windy trail until slowly.
So painfully.
So eagerly.
I will find new treasures.
I will be regrown, and my heart will sing again
Like a tree after the fire.
Like a flower after the winter.

And you are distant, running with my rotted heart.
Trotting along in a separate direction,
With Jesus on your mind,
And God on your heart,
But only looking for what you need.
A different path, a different way.
Not wrong, just not the same.

I have thoughts of you
But I'm where I'm needed now
Memories bind me

This is for you.
The girl who was told that she is worth nothing.
The girl who was told that she doesn’t work hard enough.
The girl who has been used for her joy and left when it gets hard.
The girl who runs when she feels threatened.
Keep running.

Run into my arms where you can crash and burn.
Run into my head where I can absorb your worries and anxiety.
Run into my back and hop on because I will carry you.
Run into my feet and I’ll tell you to back off when you step on them.
Because I care about you.

These rays of sunshine aren’t just meant for me,
The warm breeze isn’t just meant for you.
We are built for each other.
We are meant to dance together,
We are meant to caress those who need warmth,
We are meant to refresh the heated faces of hot summer days.

You are more than a gentle breeze,
You are more than a reckless gust,
You are more than a destructive force.
You have power with in you,
To be just enough.

The wind blows where it wants to,
You cannot know where it comes from,
Or where it is going.
So is the Holy Spirit.
So is the Divine with in you.
You will never know what you are to others,
But the sun needs you.
The daisies need you.
The wind blows where it wants to,
But I pray that it always finds me in my time of need.

The wind blows where it wants to.
It brushes my cheeks and swoops up into the heavens. It glides through the buildings of the city, and tickles the trees with its sweet whispers and then reaches you. But do you realize it’s the same wind?
We are from the same place. We belong to the same family and same tribe.
We are the broken ones. We are the self loathing, questioning, angry, and hurt ones.
We are the rumbling of the stomach asking for food.
We are the tangled hair in the morning.
We are the trash perfectly full, and ready to be taken out.
We are life.
We are the rhythms of choosing to live today, or saying maybe tomorrow.

For goodness sakes, put a bigger smile on your face.
You look like you’re trying, and I’m not buying it.
I use to lament the miles that separate us, but now i rejoice in the distance.
Stay over there, and I’ll be here.
I’ll live in the light, and fight fight fight back the memories of your hands on my body.
I’ll push away all the butterflies, and sweep them into the corner where they can decompose and slowly fade away.
I’ll let my insides, layer by layer, forget your voice. Forget your laugh. Forget even the way you move.
Because now, it’s her turn.
Now she gets to discover, each flaw, each tear in your integrity and character.
You’ll play the part, and act like it’s not hard for you to be okay with yourself.
Will she know as much as I do? Will she explore the places I had been before, and came to love more and more?
Will she get to whisper words we once shared under the summer stars and grassy fields?
Will you sing her songs by the shores and sunsets, while she sings along, better than my voice could muster.
Because I wonder.
I wonder if this will really last. I wonder if it’s just a cover, because God knows I’m not over-
Alright, you got me. I almost said it.
But I have to remember that your way of believing is a way of deceiving those you love into thinking you accept them, when really they are less than.
I look at the faces we grew to know together, I listen to the hearts of the ones who differ.
I can’t, you said.
With a stern mouth and fake face plastered on the man I once loved is now a little boy running scared for the corn fields.
You hide behind home baked pies and lies of an American Dream, an archaic stream, slowly drying up in a drought of reality. Of God calling us to look forward. Let’s walk through the desert. Let’s stumble through nothingness until you find it’s there that God speaks.
God speaks not to gender, not to race, not to attraction. God speaks to our bodies, God speaks to our communities, God speaks through our hearts.
Do not shame yourself for loving yourself. Do not tell me that I’ll shine brighter on my own. Do not tell me how to be, because I thought we were a team.
Secret glances and awkward run ins left me in the cold while you’re warm in the frosted lands. Stuck in the middle of worlds moving forward, caught in the eye of the storm where everything is the norm.
But the storm is coming. It’s gunning you down. I pray it hits you hard and knocks the doe eyed look out of your sockets. I hope it stirs the fire that once burned brighter, and I hope you find all the answers. I hope you know that life isn’t in one place. It’s the wind, blowing through trees, making the leaves sing. It’s the endless rhythm of the ocean caressing shores, and checking on it’s lovers. It’s the sound of still waters on a sunday afternoon.
Pull the grace from your face, and see that others need your help. Pull your head out from behind your own ambition and ammunition, and see that what we hold is not a weapon, but an endless procession of hurt and misrepresentation.
You see, there’s a book we would read. We would read it together, and marvel and wonder. But soon it turned into poison. I ran away scared and you held it closer.
But that poison is the same kind that courses through veins of anger. It’s the same poison that courses through veins of pain.
So I’ll be careful. I’ll study the parts that seem too venomous, while you dive right in and let it take over.

Tall Towers above with gleaming lights
Beautiful hotels, and beautiful girls,
But what lay in the streets is from our fights.
Those innocent people with scars and limbs,
Helpless and homeless but hoping for rights.
They walk the streets, they give us tours,
But can we ever really rebuild what has been ruined?
They have such courage and such despair
But underneath the damage and the scars
They have something of a kind heart.
The wilderness muffles the battle cries,
She hides the dead and the broken,
But in the city there is no escape
From the terrible people who have been *****
Of their skins, of their limbs, of their lives.
Museums, Memorials, and Memories
Scatter this beautiful land,
But deep inside the heart of it all
Lays the millions who were doomed to fall.
Americans were here
Standing tall and strong, but weak in the knees
Not ready for war, not ready to be ****** so far
From Home, from safety, from the comforts we are
Deep in ourselves we are full of ourselves,
But these men want nothing less but to forget the hells,
They witnessed, they practiced, they created in the land
So they marched together arm and arm, United we stand,
But for how long until they return in boxes or worse,
People ready to quit the lives and cursed,
Thoughts that haunt and taunt pulling their brains,
Farther from their own to create a horror of images
Strewn through their vision, unable to get out
The picture of the women
Running away from the big metal monsters
Children, burned from their big bullet bombers.
This was a beautiful country I’ll say to others,
But I’ll know what lurks in those dark dark corners.

Dear Poetry,
Please be gentle.
I’ve admired you for years, and despite all of my tears, I’ll never forget the way you caressed my heart. Warming it and patching it word by word and verse by verse.
But this will be my first, and this is not very well rehearsed,
So
Dear Poetry,
be gentle.
Let me stumble and tumble through the first and second lines but don’t run towards the concubines just yet.
There’s hope for us right?
Dear poetry, don’t go so quickly.
Come sit with me by the window and tell me what way the wind blows.
Whisper to my soul all the things I need to know.
Lift my hair with your metaphors and beat a rhythm so deep I have to feel my heart beat to know I’m alive, because you -
you are the only thing that makes me unique. I can weave through words and sing the similes until I get too dizzy, and when I look up, there’s no eyes I can’t meet.
Dear Poetry,
be mine.
Let’s sit in the grass and laugh on our backs
Let’s wade through the creek bed and read thoughts in my head,
Let’s skip like my heart when he played his part.
Let’s drown scorned love with ciders in a pub.
Let’s be silly and really, really- -
Dear Poetry,
I’ll be at your door every day. Waiting for a hint, a taste, of what to say.
Line by line I’ll build you a castle, stanza by stanza add a rung to the ladder, and poem by poem I’ll make us stronger until I can no longer see the ground and all we have is bound-
Dear Poetry,
Let’s do this again sometime.

I’d pick the Pacific any day.
Its crazy crashes and harsh cold splashes call my heart.

I’d pick the Pacific over your calm grain blowing in the wind.
Though there may be beauty in the simple, I want to feel the fight of the waves, through the rocks and shells, and feel my stomach ache in fear at the depths and strength of the water around me.
I’d rather drown than shrivel up. I’d rather go out fighting than meekly falling over.

I was silly to think I could be anyone else but the storm I am.
The manic shift of tides, the pull of forces beyond my control send me shooting back and forth pounding my fists in the sand, crashing into the rocks head first, beating myself up against things that seem impossible to change. I could pretend for a while that I was mild, but then you ran away in the harshest storm we’d seen in years.
I lost my bearings and let go of what I was holding onto. Watching your back slowly fade as I drifted waiting for you to turn around the water wells up in my eyes. Silly me. Silly me for thinking I could ever hold back.
I swam away, diving deeper, letting bubbles tickle my sides, feeling my brain float back up to the surface and up into the clouds, I knew it was time to come up for air. But what if I didn’t?
I’d just return to that place of calm waters, and stay stagnant and unchanged. I fought to find the surface. I fought back against every doubt, every fear, every insecurity, and found I was better in that salty mess.
The air above tasted fresh and clean. I felt every limb tingle. I felt every breath burn. I was alive.
The shore was distant and I wondered if you could see me. I wondered if you were looking. Maybe you’d see the grandeur you left behind. Maybe you’ll finally understand the cost of sitting back and only watching the waves. I can’t go back to that place of silence and of calm.
So go off into the fields. Go sit and lay on your back with your hand in someone elses. I’ll be beating against the shore until I find my answers. I’ll be there.