I.
I breathed in each toxic
story of relatives
departed or deported
that left you with nothing
but gerbera daisies
next to gravestones.

II.
I tried to diffuse
my scholarly ambitions,
to fill in the blanks
on your applications,
to change your histology
to help you evolve.

III.
My body rejected you.
My alveoli ached
to be free and breathe.
My chordae tendinae
were pulled too taut
and tore.

IV.
I caved into myself
with no other choice
but to detoxify.


*November 13, 2014
10:27:16 PM

Forty eight hours since I sat at my dining room table
The sweetness from the red velvet bundts and
The sharpness of the burnt wax filled the air
I had just blown out the candle on another year
And I looked at my small stack of cards
And I realized that none were signed with your name
But I wasn’t surprised because
Not only did you bail the day before to see us
For the first time in a few months but
You hadn’t even called.
Friends I haven’t talked to in years logged onto facebook
And typed the two measly words
That would have made all the difference.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by both
Your neglectful nature and
Your ******* excuses
But it doesn’t help it hurt any less.
I wonder if you remember the disgust
When you not only lit up in the car with me
But told me the right woman could make you quit
Or recall the weeks I was trapped
In a cheap house with cracking doors
On a dirt road in some small city
With your crazy, thought-to-be witch of a wife
That conned you for all that you had
To split with her drug addict, anxiety-ridden sons.
Even if your memory is that far-fetched that you don’t
You can’t even bring yourself to remember
The day I was born?
Even if you had, the lack of acknowledgment
Is utterly upsetting
And it left the pieces of my smile
Scattered on the shower floor
As I heard my mother yell at your voicemail
Because you couldn’t bother to pick up
The other line either.
The week you wait to apologize
Won’t make me any more eager to forgive
And you best realize
I won’t forget.


*August 13, 2014
9:52:25 PM

I’m a few hours
and minutes
and seconds
away from adding a year
to my relatively irrelevant age
and I contemplate the complexities
of such a small number.

Nineteen.

Legally an adult,
but not nearly ready
to enter the world
on my own.

I cannot even fathom  
               braving the hallways of
               horrendous high school
or
               supporting myself and
               being on time for my insurance
               all while balancing a career

I’m stuck in the middle
of this whirlwind
of emotions and numbers
and candles and time
and homework and paychecks
and everything else
that comes with the titles of
student and teenager
and adult and employee.

It’s minutes before
I can blow out the candles
on eighteen
but I also extinguish another bit
of dependence.


*August 10, 2014
9:13:43 PM

We were a little too formal
as I gave you the usual tour of the house
that my mother would not approve of
and we were a little awkward
as I laid down next to you because
I was ready to jump into whatever this was
but at the same time it made me hesitate
because this was the first time.

The first time:
we’d ever gotten this close
and
I’d gotten to really feel
the way your muscled arms clenched
a little when you put your arm around me
and
I looked into your eyes
and you were looking straight back at me
without telling a joke or jabbing my sides
and you were serious
and I was nervous
but I kissed you anyway.

We were still slightly sweat-glistened
from mopping the dingy
and eternally sticky floors at work
but I liked the way
that I breathed you in
and it was a mix
between your quick spritz of cologne
when you thought I wasn’t looking
and your natural musky scent
that was exactly how I imagined you would smell
when I sat just far enough away
in the passenger seat.

We were a little too eager
and
your hands were a little too fast
to throw my tank top to the floor
and unhook my favorite bra
and
you were a little too fast
to get me exposed
despite our hesitations initially
but
I was a little too fast
to kiss you harder
to let you know that
I didn’t give a ****
about the lipstick that lingered
on your slightly swollen lips
and I wanted more
than just to rub my clothed body
against yours.


*August 5, 2014
11:55:19 PM

Becoming an adult was more like
reading an extremely long book
that takes a few pages
to get interesting enough
for you to read more
than ten pages at a time.

Each flip of a page
was each step
into becoming a woman.

At first, it was slow,
like when a book caught your eye
but you haven’t memorized
what each character would look like
first thing in the morning
or what their sense of humor is like.

Then, all at once,
your eyes are glued to the page
and even though they droop with exhaustion,
the pages flip fast
with an eagerness to know more.

As for the trek into independence,
each change to décor and organization
happened all at once.

Childish trophies were chucked,
zebra print comforters were replaced
with tasteful black and white
and blood red accents,
the clutter of collages and magazine pages
was torn down leaving my walls
more mature and bare,
espresso soaked furniture was ordered
on express to compliment
both the dresser and the desk.

And as I introduced
my newest person of interest to my house
and I surveyed my room from his eyes,
it was the ending I had imagined.

*July 10, 2014 5:03:37 PM

Written about a car accident on May 21, 2014

The phone only rings once
but I don’t even pause for that
I just sputter out the sobs
and sloppy descriptions of a flipped car
and cross streets where she can find us.

I remember to assure her
that me and Cyra – yes she is with me – are fine
and we turned down the trip to the ER
in the cramped ambulance
with the neglectful girl
that might have a broken arm,
probably from the nearly fatal
death grip she had on her navigation
through that red light.

They ask me the same questions
at least four times
but I can’t possibly remember
which direction I was driving
because we flipped twice in the air
and shattered my windshield in the process
and I’m not sure how we got all the way
across the intersection
because now I’m sitting on Walnut
but that’s the opposite of
the direction I was headed.

I reach for her hand because I’m just glad for two things.

I took most of the impact
and the seatbelt abrasions
and bruised bones
are mostly on my limbs
and not hers.

I looked over to my passenger seat
in fear of what I would find,
and saw her looking back at me,
scared, but alive.

May 23, 2014 3:48:40 PM

We met outside of a dingy doorframe
of a hotel room and automatically blurted out
introductions at the same time,
pinking our cheeks and
slowing
us
down.

The way you breathed out your name
as if it was the lingering smoke
from the last drag of your cigarette
captured my attention and
kept me hungry
for more.

Three days passed
and we were caught wrapped
in the white sheets of Room 243,
whispering compliments of the craft
of my soft lips on your bare skin
in between green apple
Smirnoff-soaked kisses.

You didn’t mind
when I desperately needed to find
my best friend wrapped in the arms
of a half-naked frat boy
by the bonfire flames,
just to tell her she was
the best friend I have ever had.

I didn’t mind when we ran
through the hotel hallways
to find your best friend
on the brink of arrest,
barefoot and broke,
giving the shuttle drivers a hard time.

We said goodbye outside the dented door
of the shuttle we coincidentally took
together the morning after,
leaving behind our two a.m. talks
of improvisations and dances
to stupid songs by the DJ
in the other world that is
Lake Havasu.

*May 5, 2014 4:17:28 PM