who knew that growing up,
feels a lot like growing thin?
who knew my weathered bones
would grow to hardly recognize the skin that they live in?

i’m tired
and when i say that
i mean more than just the sleepiness that seems to reside permanently around my collarbones.

i’m heavy
with the weight of converging adolescence and adulthood
like kissing life-milestone tectonic plates,
they bury us.

we spent the last of summer days soaking up what little sun the mountain range allotted us,
and the last of summer nights gathered closely around the burning ends of our post sunset cigarettes
murmuring that there must be more than this.

striving to make the grade without making ourselves insane.
substantiating our existences with substances and excess.
growing closer to these ragtag companions we’d patch-worked together in a few months time than friends we’d known for years,
this is family.
this is kin.

they say that nothing compares to the first breath of spring but i digress,
the first breath of freedom - that first whisper, no matter how tainted with ash and glitter and the ever-present impending air of responsibility it may be,
is truly incomparable.

but, on the first night you find yourself talking someone down from the dangerous concoction of stimulants and ego,
listening to them scream about how they hate the world, and you, and themselves,
remember your arboreal roots.

remember that there are trees that survive forest fires with their lives but not their branches.

that same night you will see in the mirror how resilient buds can bloom through ice, and concrete, and self-loathing.

you will find solace in persephone.
letting a piece of you die each and every winter seems a fair price for the rebirth of spring.

i cannot say that this will be the last night you find a friend on their bathroom floor,
like a child with matches, trying to strike away the unruly sprouts that have taken root under their skin
i cannot say with confidence that you will never find yourself there either.

there will be more forest fires coming your way
like a child with matches, you may start a few yourself.

but, darling, spring is around the corner
you may be mangled and gnarled and knotted,
but i have seen trees engulf steel, and watched as flora took back abandoned gardens
i have witnessed oceans of grass shoot up from ashes,

there is nothing manmade that the earth cannot take back
the earth will take you back,
there is still green within you.

count the dandelions you find poking their cadmium heads through asphalt,
remember inhabitance is not a matter of comfort but a matter of will.
feel the ripe bud of growth in the soles of your feet.
remember there is nothing wrong with returning to the dirt.

my mother tells me
that love can be found at the bottom of a cup of coffee,
and i believe her.

she calls it her "elixir",
drinks half a *** by herself
with french vanilla creamer.
calls me my father's daughter for being unable
to stomach the taste of cream and sugar.

my mother likes her coffee sweet.
i drink mine without additives,
half burnt from sitting in the *** for an hour.
i swirl the dark brew at the bottom of my cup
before giving up
on taking the last sip.

the last sip of coffee makes me gag.

my mother tells me
that love can be found at the bottom of a cup of coffee,
and i believe her.

YOU ARE:
melodrama.
sunsets on mountains and poetic weekends.
“if you write about me, i will blush when you read it.”
playing my guitar.
playing with my hair.
playing with me.
“do you want to get something to eat?”
“are you tired?”
“let me in."
holding me down, in the best possible way.
approved by my mom.
poetic texts and the reason i’ve been clutching my phone.
too good to me.

YOU ARE NOT:
what you appear to be, you are so much more.
what i expected.
disappointing.
sure about where this is going, neither am i.
a manic decision, although you may seem like it now.
alone.
mine.
mine.
*mine.

hope is a burning buddha candle.
set aflame with his ornate head slowly melting.
we sat in silence and blew the candle out before his waxen ears met his shoulders, but you would’ve liked to have seen him exist in a puddle.
you sit quietly that morning and wonder what it would be like to exist in a puddle.
you decide that you would have liked it.

hope clings itself to the fabric of the floral sundress you bought two weeks before the leaves turned shades of burgundy and ochre.
when asked why you bought it, you shrugged it off.
you wore it, baring shoulders and all, alone in your room with the blinds open.
the september sun glanced at you and you at it.
you were never a dress person, but the blue and pink flowers seemed at home on your torso
and who were you to separate blooms from their home?

hope is your baby brother showing up at your door, sand blonde hair reminiscent of the beaches you were raised on.
he smelled like salt and violent adolescence.
in his hands, he clutched four large pieces of fruit that he stole from the hotel because he said that the fruit bowl from home missed you.
you saw novels in his seafoam grey eyes that read that he missed you, too.
you hugged him
too tight
too many times.
you didn’t cry when he got in the car, but you did when he called you later and said that he was counting down the days to christmas.
there were 114, now there are 109.

hope is st. elmo’s fire and holding your best friends hand as you explain to him that you always felt like ionized plasma.
that you’re like lightening, but not quite.
it is stopping the car on the side of the road to pick wildflower bouquets and press them between the empty pages of your new journal.
it is squash blossom pizza and $60 parking tickets because you were too lazy to catch the bus.

hope is writing a poem and, for once, it not sounding like a eulogy.
hope is writing a poem and not hearing your voice shake as you recite it.
hope is writing a poem and finally feeling like a poet.
hope is writing a poem and finally living like a poet.
hope is writing a poem.

i like a boy who likes the rain -
who damns the sunshine while finding solace in thunder and lighting, the pitter patter of drops on a tin roof.
i'm more of a dreary, overcast person. i feel most at home on this planet when the sun seeks shelter from the impending storms; but he smiles when the sky turns grey, and i find myself smiling, too.

i like a boy who wiggles his hips when he sings.
it's in his nature; he dances.
sometimes with the radio, sometimes the phone as it rings, and even me when i sing.
i find solace and comfort in music, but he celebrates it. and as he shrugs his shoulders to the bass line of a song whose lyrics i will never understand, but will always relate to, i find myself swaying, too.

i like a boy who tells me i am starlight; constantly. when i am cramming the last bit of food in my mouth, when i am pouring sweat from being in the sun all day, when i am bed-headed and smeared-makeuped holding onto him for dear life. he tells me that i am the beginning and end of the universe. he tells me that i am beautiful. he smiles and looks at me like he is a starving man, and i am the last morsel of sustinence on the planet. and i find myself believing it, too.