stop assuming that i want to be a hero.
i want nothing of burning buildings
or gold ribbons.

i don’t want more—
your more is not the kind i need.
reward me, instead, with less.

when you forget me,
forget me to my face.
come see, with me,
how harrowing humanity can be.

spare me please of the plucking,
gleaning over by money-stuffed palms,
greased-up with thorn-drawn blood:
a short bill to pay
when building bouquets.

share with me please,
the price you’ve prescribed
for bottom shelf brand human being.
what else do I owe?
what must I lose to live?

or,
if it’s easier,
to die? — the way i wish:
a ****,
tucked in the crack of old cement,
unseen by all but sun and rain.
safe and cheap, or free.

or free.
or free to be, left in my invisibility.

the earth will not ask for attention.
but rumble in a mighty silence,
move an eternity
of clouds and waves to action.
make assembly lines of atoms,
trembling in their subservient shells,
then bathe in the disorder.

she will not offer mercy.
but bring life desperately to it’s knees, wring it meticulously
of all its borrowed magic.
and with her bare and calloused hands, spread her prize
like blood and honey across the skies, burning brightly in the glorious colors.

the earth will not forgo her spinning.
but drag every root or claw
that clings to her
through an infinity of dust and frost. skirting dutifully along the sun’s rays, bound to a thin and treacherous tight rope, gripped like a razor blade
wedged into her fist.
spilling precious drops of matter,
live and dead, like a trail of wet paint across the universe,
dancing delightedly in deference
to her imminent destruction.

it’s feeling colder.
                                        outside
my window.
          inside
these              sheets.

The steam of the fever dream
we      w      a       e
                e       v      d
together is
           s e t t l i n g
on the rug like morning dew.

It’s heavy air gets
    stuck
   inside
     m y
   throat
each time i try to
swallow back a memory.

But still I
              r i  s e
        . l i k e  t h e .
sun, brighter every day.


Making way for oceans
                            ~~~~~~
                       ­     ~~~~~~~~
                           ~~~~~~~~~~
where there once were
                                         deserts
between my arms,
my lips, my legs.

Brushing into piles:

          the sand
        you dragged
    in with your boots,                  the
                                     ­              dried up
        the                                  flower petals,
  parts of me
you left behind.
    

like    *****   laundry.
    inside my room.
    inside my heart.

will you fight with me
for simpler days--
late night skate, &
call-wait
-ing up to hear a
slurry word and sunsets
over skylines
overthinking,
sinking stomachs
through the bathroom floor,
one more
love note left inside your pocket
rips across your sneakers
and your jeans
on our knees under a streetlight,
stealing time from goodnight,
glowing in the grown-out kind of
confidence
i left in 17
when you still believed in beauty
and in mine, particularly.

you knew that i loved flowers,
gave them to me
the same way you did promises:
in pretty, dying bouquets.

a dozen “we’ll be okay”s
   someday
i’d get that quiet house
where I can lay my weary bones.
and you can lay another lady
every time that I’m not home.

trimmed the stems down,
avoiding each thorn
touching only the parts of me
that were soft and green
like money.
“relax. It comes and goes”
and so did you, through any
willing woman’s clothes.

in shiny vases:
“anything I could afford,
anything for you”
any thing that you could get inside
because anything is more.
and so I got my pretty flower petals
covering the floor
in a trail that led me to the bed,
the only way you knew.
always got my pretty flowers,
instead of any truth.

I am growing, sometimes painfully.
Sometimes out of molds i spent years shaping,
Sometimes, cautiously, into new ones.
I am still wearing all of my truths in layers,
deciding which ones grip my curves best,
and which ones ought instead, to be shed.

In spite of all the weights I chose to carry,
and all the dark holes I almost made home,
I am still climbing.
Towards the freest, lightest version of myself,
I am still growing.

And so should all of us.

In the face of everything and everyone that strives to shrink you,
choose to grow.
Even when it feels like being torn from the inside out,
Even when it breaks your heart,
Even when it means loss, and change, and chaos,
choose, still, to grow.

Even if growing means standing still,
Even if right here, right now feels comfortable,
bask in that comfort, be grateful for the relief it offered you,
but rise with the sun, with the 360,000 new babies
born each day into a new shot at life,
pack up the things you've learned to keep, and go.
In whatever small or large way you can manage,
grow.

Even if it is in ways invisible to others,
even if it is a rate so slow it feels like going backwards,
when the timing is just right, youll know.

Because all of the great big forests on Earth
were formed one patient seed at a time,
because that time is a gift whose value
we often dont understand until it is laid
to rest with us at death,
because life alone is a miracle,
every day you are alive, you should be growing.

Because you owe it to the breath that makes you willing,
to the trees that keep the lungs inside you filling,
to the home the land on which you stand provided,
when youve decided to avoid the pain of living,
and instead, you slow
do so with intent not to let go.
With every ounce of strength you know, just grow.

she is both blissful and unbearable.
she spreads her prettiest
and ugliest sides like cards within a deck:
and plays them simultaneously.

she walks with a heavy
and stubborn independence,
crowned by a perpetual quest for reassurance that when life’s sweetest lemons are handed to her,
she won’t have to taste them alone.

she questions everything.
it does not mean she won’t believe.
she puts herself on a pedestal
she usually doesn’t deserve
and from which she falls often.

she meets any threat to her values,
no matter how twisted and illogical they are, with due resistance.
she admits she is often still wrong.

but offer her the challenge of acceptance—lay your weapons down next to hers—
and she will live to show you,
over and over,
better than you ever saw coming.