Today, I saw a person in front of me, their eyes on something else
and I took a moment to inspect them,
and then I realised it was myself.

There they were, wearing the clothes I had put on in the morning,
wearing the face I recognise in pictures
and standing exactly where I was standing.
But, they were not me – in that moment, they were not.
How could I be that girl, that women standing there in that shop?

The body inside is not that one I saw in the mirror,
the one who was looking a different way.
Inside, I’m more, I’m smaller, I’m darker, I’m paler and
I dress for them each morning, choosing from the clothes
not bought for them exactly,
but forced to match them, to meet halfway.
I knew it then, with a glance at the mirror person, nothing pretty would be bought today.

And it wasn’t.
Some days, it’s dungarees.
Other days, it’s dresses.
Some days, it’s shorts and leggings.
It all depends on who I’m playing as and
I’m sure that’s all okay, but then they say describe yourself in three words.

How can I describe myself, this person  I do not know?

So I go for the easy option and choose them from a list:
Quiet
Creative
Studious
And I suppose, that’s one way of putting myself into three words;
one way of putting myself into an easy to understand formula.

But it doesn’t cover it.
Three words don’t cover it.

Because really, I think I’m just an observer inside my own imagination,
an observer inside my own life and all these other lives inside my head.
I’m just the implied narrator of this person in the mirror
and all these others, who come and go in different places.

But then the girl in the mirror reminds me that tomorrow is my birthday,
a day to celebrate the fact I exist outside of my head
and then she touches a shirt, made of itchy fabric
and there’s life outside the overwhelming inside,
a life where I need to describe myself in three words
and fit into those three words and into that one person,
looking at something else, not in the mirror.

“We get it, you write.”
What a laugh
You get it that I write
But you don’t understand
That this is the only way
I can say how I feel,
Say what I think,
And I can say it masked
By metaphors or
Similes
That would leave the
Reader guessing what
I mean.

“We get it, you write.”
But you don’t understand
That the words flow through
My head every waking moment
And I’m constantly thinking
Of the next line to be typed,
The next word.
I can’t go a day without
Thinking in poetry,
Without wanting to express
Myself with these paragraphs,
Without needing to release these
Feelings.

“We get it, you write.”
You get that it’s frustrating
That I take a random sentence
You may say that intrigues me
And turn it into something
That you never noticed when
You were saying it.
You don’t see the world of
Possibilities
That are unleashed with
Each word you mutter
Under your breath
But I do

“We get it, you write.”*
And I get it that you will
Never understand that
It isn’t just writing to me
Because, after all,
I am the
Poetry
And the poetry
Is me.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water,
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a bunch of flowers, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind.  The wind.
I alone can contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here.  Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Curl round me as though you were frightened.
Even so, a strange shadow once ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your ******* smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
Until I even believe that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I was born with the biggest eye sockets the nurses had ever seen, but unfortunately my eyelids weren't even
Because of genetics, or from a Hispanic superstition my mother told me, I have uneven eyelids that make me take pictures with my left side because society told me to find my good side since my whole face wasn't good enough
Wasn't pleasing enough
or wasn't beautiful enough
That lasted about the first 11 years of my life
Then I met a boy in California who said my eyes were so big and so brown that my eyelashes reminded him of spider legs because of all the coats of mascara and black eyeliner I used to compensate for the lack of evenness, and how the color of my eyes reminded him of brown sugar cookies his grandma use to make him when he was sad
That's when I fell in love with myself
In love with the fact that my eyes were described to be the size of the moon with or without make up
How the brownness in them turned darker with rage,  jade when calm, and a honeysuckle color when in love
I fell in love with the way my eyelashes touched my eyebrows on a daily bases
And even whenever I cry, I still love the way my eyes can tell someone how I feel better than words do
To this day I don't know what that boys name was, but I thank him
For reminding me that my faults, even the slightest ones make me unique
make me beautiful