i don't watch home movies
hate them
reason being because
when i was young
i was looking for a movie
my mother
had recorded for me
and accidentally
put one in the vcr
that i'm not sure
i was supposed to see
i know the obvious response
"uh oh, ****"
sorry to disappoint
they were only marked with dates
  1991
on live television
montel williams asks my father
"how can you just throw
your child away like a piece of trash?"
   1994
i spend so much time
in the emergency room
that my parents stop
penciling in growth marks
on the frame
of my bedroom door
i always thought
it was because they believed
i would never grow out
of this sickness
sometimes i believe
the reason that they
never bought me a dream catcher
was because they never thought
i'd live long enough
to see them come true
   1996
i am eliminated
from a spelling bee
because i didn't know
the 'dad' is silent in 'family'
   2013
before i got into poetry
i used to do standup
none of my jokes were funny
one of the other comics
tells me my skits are dry
sometimes sad
he says "why don't you joke
about something like your family?"
so i say
"i never wore any sunblock
because i didn't want anything
to keep me from my father"
i say "what do you call christmas
without lights or heat?"
before he has a chance
to answer
i say "1997. better yet
why don't you
make like a dad and
leave"
   2014
every time we drive
past the hospital
my mother reminds me
how much it cost to save my life
like she'd rather
have her money back
she doesn't have to say
that sometimes she wishes
it was me who had died
instead of my brother
i can hear it in the way
she says "love you"
sometimes i imagine
that if i were to die
that she
would pick out a casket for a child
because she never loved
the person i became
yesterday i told my father
how close i'd been
to suicide lately
and he said
"that's my boy,
livin on the edge.."
and i can't remember
if i laughed
or cried

paper dolls
far and wide
walking around
looking perfect
drawn faces
all the same
acutely flat
enough to slice
I’m not flat
or perfect
so I can’t fit
in paper town
I’ve lost hope
to find love
I’ll just take grief
and papercuts
must be an angel’s grace
to see her standing there
someone else lost in paper town
with her own scars from paper dolls
her face is real, not drawn
it’s a lonely blue light
in a whitewashed crowd of static
dolls wearing their brightest faces
I know that she’s not flat
and she is not perfect
because I know how deep she is
but I could just jump in and dive
I take her by the hand
soft and painless for once
while we trade our sorrows and joys
feelings too heavy for paper

last year,
you fell in love with a boy
that only wanted your virginity
and you gave it to him on a silver platter
so you could remember what love feels like
but babygirl,
it's not love
if he only loves you for what's between your legs
it's not love
if the only thing he compliments you on
is the way your hips are formed
it's not love
if every time you said no
he ignored it

that boy is not your lungs
you can breathe without him,
i promise
he is not your atlas
never let someone
that doesn't care about the way
your continents took form
hold your world on their shoulders
*because when they crumble,
you will too

The universe is in constant equilibrium,
This much is basic.
But most fail to see it in the dark corners of humanity.
They fail to notice that there is a sigh of relief for every gasp of horror, as if the air goes from one pair of lungs to the other.
We reject the idea that for every happily ever after, there is a pair of broken hearts, as we'd rather stay where we are than move to where we need to be.
We fail to see that we need as many dreamers to see the possibilities as doers to make them reality.
Without one, the other cannot exist

You twist my hands, and my mouth
kept still. Again and again.
Turning blue and purple, they are dying.
And I thought: Is this the way
holding hands feel?
Suffocating, and miserable,
I don't think this is right.

We stayed statuesque, out of sight
of crazed eyes, and my mouth kept still.
Vibrations stuck between the walls
of my throat. Under my mind, above my chest.
And your hands are still on my hands.
And now they're turning
into the early night.

This is how we die, you say.
Even nothing has been forged
into my memory. Your hands had killed mine.
Over and over, i cling to the possibilities.
And you let go when my hands are gray
walked back into your skin.
You are nothing but a murderer.

And this is how
I cannot go back to you. You are smart
I applaud you. That's the thing
anger is an impasse. As you are.
And now, i wonder
why I didn't think this before
**You were killing the very thing that i could hold you to keep you mine.

how do you tell someone
no amount of telling me to love myself
will make me find myself beautiful
and how do you tell someone  
getting out of bed in the morning
feels like trying to swim with
stones tied to your ankles
and how do you tell someone
trying makes it worse
and how do you tell someone
everyday is a struggle,
and ode to the man hanging on a cliff with one hand

*a boy that still had someone to confide in
dared to tell me,
"don't bottle up your emotions"
so i looked him in the eyes
as i bought a bigger bottle

The way you smiled at him is still painted on me like burn marks

The image twists itself in favor of my pessimistic mind each time it surfaces like an ugly drawn out slideshow about the progression of lost hope

-your eyes getting softer, chasing your lips-

-his hand getting closer to your hips-

If I could control everything in this world I would lose my mind but if it would ease this troubled mind I would make every decision in your favor

I sat in the drivers seat waiting

waiting for a passenger

I knew if the gear shift ever left neutral without a life worth protecting seated carefully in one of the four seats that the tiny, two door, import sports car was going to find itself unmoving for an eternity and still in fifth gear.

in a ditch, against a wall, around a tree, the first thing I would have seen once that tiny, two door, import sports car and I reached one hundred and eleven miles per hour