I know I shouldn't say that
it's a boys job to hold the girl
and the girl should be held.
I shouldn't even be saying "boy" and "girl"
when there are those that aren't.
But ******* baby I feel so wrong
asking you to hold me.

One time a man told me

That for a poem to mean anything

to have any worth at all

I had to slave over it for hours

for days

for weeks

“sometimes months” he said to me.

Poems should be about beauty

and sometimes grace is spontaneous.

Please lemme go

I don’t want to feel any pain

I just want to *leave

Seeing the ocean for the first time
Seeing it for the hundredth
Seeing it again and again but

Being numb like this
Being alone for the thousandth night

Feeling vaporous as oxygen
Feeling weary when

Seeing the ocean

When her mother says
"there is blood in the hallway"
she doesn't even look.
Too many times she's heard screaming
from outside her paradise of a room,
and has glanced out to them fighting
again.
This time she asks
"why"
the answer surprises her.

When we go to the zoo
all I can think about is you.

Both of us aged thirteen.
He had his first joint alone in a flat with his brother
and told me all about it.
I asked out a beautiful girl and loved her very much
and told him all about it.
That year it started.
We tried to see each other on the weekends
but he was already out the door with a twenty in his fist
and I was in my room, my beautiful girl with me.
It was like that for two years.
He was high and
I was too.
Not until we were fifteen did he get caught,
"My **** was too dank"
and I opened up,
"Can we see each other tomorrow sweetie"
We played basketball that night,
like nothing ever happened.