Because I remember things, like people,
And skateboards aren't just skateboards,
they're my best friend and the memory of her pushing me around the kitchen in her longboard.

Pool and my eightball keychain are much the same, another friend's name attached to it like his lips to a drink, because god he could drink.

My uncle's the surfers catching their first waves and my older brother is all fighter jets and firemen.

Meanwhile, my mama's all roses and red bandanas, and the poetry I try to birth every night. And I only thought about colors when referring to her and I, red and blue mixing into a perfect lilac sky, but then my ex became green. Green like the olive sthetoscope they wanted and green like the song that hopes they're happy. But green, like the various shades coloring my house, doesn't phase me anymore.

Instead, life's a bit more yellow. Yellow, like the sunflowers I'd get Dali or the chicks my goddaughter would chase after on the yard. No. Yellow like the nailpolish you ruined and yellow like the sun that rises on the east.

Yellow, like fire or passion when you play, and yellow like the colors burning up the heavens at the end of the day.


Yellow, unbeknownst, laced into that first hello.

As a child, I used to believe love didn't exist
Because if love was real, my dad wouldn't have left my mom
If love was real, my dad would have visited us

Then I grew up and I wasn't sure I believed in God either,
Because if God was real, He wouldn't have made my mother sick
If God was real, why did He abandon me?

And if God was love and God didn't exist, then surely love didn't either.
They became supporting statements, a hypothesis to be tested.
And then I proved myself wrong by falling in love.
And maybe, just maybe, if love was real then so was God.

But the God I knew wasn't a merciful one and the God that answered my prayers took my love.
He bundled it up and gave it away, and maybe it isn't that God doesn't exist and neither does love, but that maybe, just maybe, I'm not meant to be loved.

Abuela dice que me vio en el pasillo
Cuando me había pasado todo el día en la cama
Y que la busqué a su cuarto vestida de blanco,
Pero me fui antes de que se levantara.
Es como aquel sueño en la playa,
El de la chica que parecía llevar tu cara.
Excepto que ahora es mi semblanza con la que te enmascaras.
¿Serás un pedazo de alma vagabunda,
O un eco de tu vida en esta casa?
Quizas eres el deseo de una niña,
Enterrado en el llano de una terraza
Porque la vida le supo cruel mientras la muerte la enamoraba.

Quizas eres el fantasma de lo que pudo haber sido
Efímera ilusión de algo perdido.

at the end of the day,
i know i tried my best
and when all was done
i thought i could rest
but you've got sharp teeth
-knife above my breast-
did i ever hear your heart beat?
or just mine echoing in your chest?

Sometimes I want to die.
I'm not sure what comes after.

Grandpa says we're reborn amongst the stars,
That maybe we'll live on Mars.
I wonder if the sunrises would be just as colorful,
Or if the sky will drown in the same rusty red as the ground.

It's a recurring thought; the ins and outs of it all.
I think about it almost as often as grandma says she regrets keeping us.
That she should have let dad's family raise us to avoid all the fuss.
And that last bit stings.
It used to be my character was just like his,
The slap to the face I'd get for correcting her in front of others.
Now it's remorse for the life she led and throwing punches without the proper covers.
Bruised knuckles are better than split skin and sometimes the thought of getting caught is enough to stop a robber.

《》

Sometimes I want to die.
I'm not sure what comes after,
But Heaven would sound a lot like your laughter.