the night after the covenant school shooting, i was at work.

a man comes in and is very kind to me,
seems kind to his wife as well. but he turns and i see something on his hip, a holster. and the gun.

now, i live in tennessee. the sight was not too strange, but so unsettling after what had just happened. how could he walk around openly carrying the same weapon that had killed people just hours before?

how could he bring a firearm into our store, after hearing about those deaths?

these prayers to gods who don’t hear us are not working, and our government does not know how to protect us in ways that matter. we can scream at the top of our lungs that it isn’t fair, but it will fall on deaf ears.

as a child in america, i am terrified every day. terrified that my brothers will not make it home after i drop them off. terrified that my mom will pick up the wrong substitute teaching job. terrified that my best friends will not graduate with me because this country is more focused on how people represent themselves rather than what is killing us.

i am seventeen and i am so tired of being scared for my ******* life. there is blood on the floor and on our hands and in our memories and we practice hiding in our classrooms and workplaces because it is real. these kids were real and now they are dead.

nothing feels the same as it did when we were young and I know growing up is supposed to feel good but sometimes it’s just really ******* bittersweet

a bead of sweat drips down
the bow of my lip,
the hot air slowly suffocating us.
she exhales, smoke billowing in rings
from her mouth out the open window.
her head weighs on my chest, her feet
kicked up on the windowsill.
she looks up at me, green eyes searching
for something she doesn’t seem to find.
i know that this, us, is going to dissolve
someday, but dear god please
give me more time.

nasturtium climbs up the side of my childhood home
in the same spot I planted it when i was sixteen

the rest of the garden is gone

i feel like an outsider driving past the place I
lost my first tooth in, and nobody i know lives there anymore

i wonder if the new family knows how many times we ended up laughing so hard we cried, and i wonder if the
heights marked on our doorframe were painted over
the second they got in

when we moved out, the pictures hanging on my wall were stuffed into boxes that i still haven’t unpacked as an adult, and the echo of my completely empty bedroom was the hollowest sound i’d ever heard

growing up is dull, growing up is forgetting, growing up is moving on from everything that made you exactly what you are today, then learning to live with the change

the peach stand at the end of my road
sweet, sticky peach juice dripping down my chin
the biggest smile you've ever seen filling my face

these are summer nights for us
sunlight until nine pm
streetlights softly clicking on as we walk home,
barefoot and happy
we were young then

what happened to this feeling? those nights?
why is growing up synonymous with forgetting?
i don't remember my best friends from school anymore
or how the smell of my mom's perfume made me feel safe.
i can't recall the way summer nights felt,
and my birthday doesn't feel special.

i don't want to forget the only things that kept me alive,
the only things that filled me with joy when joy seemed to run short.
please, i can't forget yet

hey lover

i was happy with you, i know it
our matching rings left green circles
but meant devotion all the same

maybe the story of us wasn't ever going to last,
maybe this was always doomed,
maybe hurt was the only natural ending

this isn't goodbye, because your obsidian eyes
show up in my mind with the turn of your lips,
the freckles on the column of your throat, the
memory of your hand on the small of my back

this isn't goodbye, because i know i will see you again.
every time my eyelids meet, i wait for peace to flood through
with our memories and the way we loved despite it all,
the sunlight you brought into my dreary days

they will craft poetry from our pain
create something beautiful out of the destruction.
our memories, cemented in the minds of those like us
those who may be just as ill-fated
those who beg the universe for one more second.

hey lover, i was happy with you. i know it.