The City at night
comforts me
more
than you ever did.

Is it just
wildly beautiful,
or were
You
just awful to Me?

It’s interesting;
everytime i see you,
in dreams or even in person
how you jump back,
Burned.

my eyes wander to the boy holding
you
my mind wonders to memories
Of me doing that.

You jump
scared shitless
as if I’ve beaten
You.
as if
Me
my faith in you
& our shared nights
jumped you in the shade you casted to hide yourself.

As if months of love in the dark
has made you go back
to a loveless man taking you into his arms.

Sparks turn to fire,
and we’ve turned the heat up,
like the gas stove at my mother’s house,
Several times.

inflammation all over you.
your skin.
The soul you once had.
and yet you have a fear of  
fire.

I suppose you pretending it didn’t happen works too.

I should be smug,
tightly wrapped around your finger,
cozy even.

A rope of insecurity
fastens around my neck.

I fasten around you
tighter
tighter
tighter

My grip on reality without you gets
looser.
looser.
Looser.

I sat in the bathroom,
tears streaming down the slides of my face,
the cool floor
turning me cold blooded.
I stayed for hours,
Nobody came.
Blood isn't family.

I was so close to just saying it,
yet
you decided
to make it
sound horrible.

I cried myself to the shower last night.

I used boy shampoo over the arms that I’ve been scratching for hour, four hours spent trying to get the blood I hated so much to come up and sit on my skin like it was their art gallery, hanging on for display.

It never came.

I run water over me burning tears into camouflage,the words of an empty life stung to my head as if the thoughts branded it here on me permanently.

I’ve had nights like this before.

Nights where I put on the loosest pajamas I could find, the ones with ESPN written written as read as the books on my old library shelf. The ones I took when my brother went to work and left me by myself, the ones that made me feel manly, even if I didn’t look like a man.

I wouldn’t put a shirt on.

My chest was bare, not in the way I wanted, but I couldn’t tear off my breast and give them to a girl who wasn’t born with them, I’d just have to stare till my stomach growled and tears streamed down my face, fears of a life unloved and unlived made me put on a loose shirt and tell myself I wasn’t hungry, so instead I thought of you.

You, with your crooked smile when you see me at your doorstep with the sun’s colors draped in a bouquet. I show up in a fox shirt, the one I call lucky, and you count each and every one and you point out how dorky I am.

You, with your back on the mattress of the cheapest apartment we could find, reading love letters I’ve written to your baby sister over the phone, telling her of all my love in the distance of thousands of miles. I try to pretend I can’t hear you from the kitchen as I make you tea, the lemon juice coating it bronze with the color of its juice, your vase holds out bright sprouts of happiness as a centerpiece.


Daisies plague my mind on nights like these. They’re scattered at your funeral & my own on our graves, at the fifty yard mark.

“We’ve been rolling together since we were 25.”

Nights like these remind me that my masterpiece is so far, even if the dasies are so close, so near.

I don’t want to die anymore,
I just don’t know how to exist.
Why hello my dear friend

Darkness, you’ve paid me
Another visit.

You’ve traveled to the corners of my mind and into my deepest thoughts.
I never thought anyone would make it that far without ever touching me.

You’ve blushed at the way I put these words together, and
trust me, if you let me keep this up it can go on forever.

And I don’t mean forever as we’ll be together
forever
because I know for a fact
the statistics about high school couples,
I looked them up. Perhaps I’m being presumptuous.

Perhaps I’m thinking too far ahead, because you haven’t even
asked me on a date yet and I’m thinking of you past friendly,
going to poetry written about you,
talk about hitting on you like you were my woman crush Wednesday
but I can't anymore,
You're my woman crush everyday.  

I listen to love poems as if they were meant for me and you and
golly gee if I could,
I’d paint a thousand portraits,
take up my whole SD card in my camera,
Just so you see your beauty in my eyes

Dye my hair into your favorite color
because it puts me closer to you.


I hardly feel lonely anymore.
You’re in the shadows of my poetry, the goal for 2018,
I can’t wait to get honor roll so you can give me that hug and say
you’re proud, because that’s all the motivation I need.

And can I just say,
my medication alters my mood, but it never alters it enough for me to forget what makes me happy naturally,  
what makes me smile when I can’t seem to do it myself; will you be my
daily dose of prozac?
Doctors prescribed 50 ml grams a day but 50 minutes a day hearing you say my name is good enough too.

You’ve gotten me down to a science.
I sutter thinking about you asking me on a date and you
blush at me telling you the truth;
what does that tell us about our past lovers?

Is it alright I see you covered in a sweet truth over romanticized by my words?
Is it alright I say your name like Christians talk about Jesus and hope on our seventh day we create passion?

Jesus Christ,
if you were a word,
you’d be whatever means indescribable feeling between two people;

if you were a song I’d like you to be My Girl,

if I were a ship I’d be the love boat  
because I’m making another round tonight and you are welcome aboard, you are always welcome

because I am in trouble & you like that.
You love me being in this kind of trouble.
To you, it means I’m already yours.

I like you already but
if you let me I could fall in
deep, deep liking
for you.
I need you to stop doing whatever it is you are, because if you don’t, one of us will mess around and fall in love.

I’m stuck between
girl and boy.

I,
a person whose stood tall
against the patriarch like
it was a height rod,

was stuck between becoming
the Woman i never wanted to be
and the man i’ll never become.

I,
the first female child

In those fakely supportive
christ loving houses,

the third to come out of my mother’s womb

Was not a girl, not a woman

Not a boy, not a man

But still female.

I scream at the universe,
until it begs for mercy.

The stars dim,
meteors retreat,
The moon cries;
it thought I was talking to him.
"Lie to me again,"
I cried,
"Lie to me again,
I dare you"

I screamed the
Earth into new orbit,

Space heard a faint noise
throughout,
The government tries to
hide from the public what they just heard,
Space engineers throw away theories.

"You need her"

The universe
has come
to take you away.

when the moonlight touches my cheek,
late in night
early in the morning
i can't sleep, i over eat,
and I end up crying in the bathroom,
on the floor,
numb from medication & the thought of failure.

Tears dropped with my name inked on,
they fall to the ground with pieces of your heart.

I’ll get the broom.

Why is it,
that I find
comfort
in the dark?

Is it because,
that's the
only
place

I
don't
see
you?

I’m
a black,
queer,
atheist,
woman (***),
???? (gender).

Life is going to be so hard.

Black and white movies
play behind us
As I make you question
The whole **** world.

Mind ****
Is what you call my theories,
My stories,
My questions,
My answers.
“Is that bad?”
I ask you. You
tell me I never could tell
when you were interested
or were telling me it was bad.

I suppose you’re right.


Babe,
you ask later,
as I read,
and you watch the movie,
what is the quadratic formula?

I don’t look up
but I can feel
that **** near perfect smile.
You always do this,
ask me random questions
that aren’t useful anymore
at not least to us.

So I recite it.
And you laugh.
And I laugh.
And we continue being together
Doing different.

You ask me several more
Over the course of the movies and books.
What is flash fiction?
What is life?
What is **** made from?
Do you know that Mark Twain novel—?
Yes, I love your questions.
I love you.

Babe,
you say,
What is love?
I don’t respond.
I want to say another
dictionary definition
but it doesn’t come out.

“Mind ****,” I say.

Average.

each and every one.
Average.

I should be practicing,
but I think of you instead.