Here is where I sit and dig my teeth into my lower lip and extract the splinter of you from my heart, so I can drip red onto the paper and make it into words. Here is where I tell you how much I ached for you and never said anything. Here is where I laugh regretfully over the word ‘crush,’ which in the end fulfils its title so perfectly. Here is where I bleed.

Fact #1:
You didn’t do anything special to make me like you.
There was no zealous epiphany or grand gesture that sent butterflies streaming through my abdomen. You were horribly wonderfully you, and that’s what did it. That is what tipped me over the edge.
I remember the precise instant everything changed. The pendulum swung into unfamiliar territory; I looked at you and a powerful case of vertigo rocked my being. I may have grabbed onto something. A desk. A chair. Anything to keep me standing until my head resettled on my shoulders and the world was normal again. In any case, you were oblivious. I watched you, both sorry and glad that you were, and struggled not to drown.

I don’t blame you. It wasn’t your fault. How could you have sensed the seismic shift I was so careful not to telegraph? How could you have known I’d go and do something so moronic as get a crush on you? I’m sorry, dear. I am. I wish I hadn’t.

Fact #2:
You think no one has ever had feelings for you.

(What an uncomfortable phrase, Had Feelings For You. Sounds like there’s some sort of compartment in my heart labelled with your name, as though if you cut it open and looked inside you’d see ash and glitter suspended like dust motes in light. Impossible, infinite).

You think this because you’re human, and humans tend to see the worst in themselves. You’re—according to you—awkward, bothersome, repressed, weird, unattractive, alone, different, inferior. You worry over the biggest things, the smallest things, and everything between. You crack open with great frequency.

However.
However.

There is someone in this world who loved you, who loves you still (in a deep deep recess of her soul), who wishes she’d been brave enough to tell you; wishes also that she’d been able to hold you and kiss you and run wild with you in every beautiful place.
You are worth someone’s feelings, and there is a heart out there full of ash and glitter in your name, beating away.
Sadly, you’ll never know whose.

Fact #3:
Crushes ******* sting.

(Don’t look, don’t look at their eyes, don’t look at the color in them or the flare, hold your breath, think of anything else, remind yourself that they can’t, they won’t, it’s stupid. Call them friend, just Friend, because that’s what they want. Don’t let them see the way you pine for them, the roaring creature in your chest. Don’t. Don’t.)

Fact #4:
You didn’t return my feelings.

Inevitably, the person we find ourselves pulled to always lets something slip. A mention of a third party with whom they’d like to (and to me it sounds so painful, so ominous) “get to know.” A giggle when a certain girl or boy passes. An admiring look thrown their way.
Worse, the object of our longing declares they like no one at all, and that’s my story. I’m sorry to say I thought, for just a bit, that you did. It’s my fault for misreading the signs. I take full blame. I’m human, too, after all, and I know very little. Who am I to project my fantasy onto you?

It still hurts, though. Aches in a way I don’t wish to remember or relive, ever. Not being liked back takes the form of black, rolling nausea, which I felt when I laid prone on my bedroom floor, eyes numb and full, breathing air all thick with dead things. It’s a sickness, a condition. A person cannot get over it any quicker or easier than they can a tumor. It can recede or overwhelm and usually one has no say in this gamble.
In my case, there is both. The pain fluctuates from day to day, lifts and falls. I see you and we laugh, and, internally, privately, I bleed. But you don’t need to know that. I will not have you see me as some weak or broken thing when what I am is on fire, hot with a glowing sadness. I’m a survivor of nuclear detonation. My heart was once spattered on these walls, this page, but I’ve gathered it up and molded it together again and it doesn’t look at all how it used to, but today it’s (almost) whole.

Fact #5:
A piece of me will always wish you wanted her the way she wanted you.

I think of other universes, split off from ours: a myriad of alternate trajectories. Perhaps in one of them we are together. Perhaps we looked and we knew and we melded. Who knows? What a silly, futile wish.

That is pain and reality. That is life.

there is a woman who has been with me all this time
who’s felt the careening anguish of a family gone from three to two
who’s breathed oxygen into my sagging lungs
when then only thing in them was vaporous grief
who’s bled with me from countless soul-wounds,
both of us
driven to the brink of endurance
again and again and again
who’s shielded my raw meat heart with all she has
who’s never seemed to see in herself what I do;
the gleam of someone who has been ******
into the pounding depths against her will
but returned to the surface
every time alive
every time breathing
every time finding
the wet bedraggled girl with her and
putting both her arms around her and
saying over the shriek of the water:
I am here, I am here, and I will be, always

this is for her

for my hand holder, my moon howler,
my affirmation, my companion,
my soul keeper, my forehead-kisser,
my garden-hearted pillar of integrity

for a brave brave woman
who’s been smashed by poison people and atomic loss
but still come out
miraculously, fluorescently
shining

I stand in it:
The streets
The people
The face-blurring
shoe-smacking
heart-knocking
symphony of thousands,
full and explosive as
a swarm of grenades

and I am
overwhelmed, overwhelmed,
by the divinity of
our overlap

i. Allow yourself to be clichéd. Forgive yourself the comparison to phenomena like stars, tsunamis, volcanoes, and the end of the world.  There is no shame in depicting the galaxies you see in your irises or the seas crashing in your lungs. Don’t for a minute diminish your words because you’re afraid of seeming larger, lovelier, or grander than you really are. Keep writing huge. Keep writing splendorous.

ii. Destroy the anxiety gap between you and your work. Sit down and write whatever’s filling you in that moment. When stupidity comes, embrace it. When unoriginality comes, offers it your deepest welcome. When panic comes, give it a wink and keep dragging your pen across the page. There is no wrong, no right. There is only Something. Do not label the Something in such stark, dull terms as good or bad. If you must label it, label it burning, label it victorious, scarlet, howling, fresh, moving, disastrous, gleaming, but never reduce it to success or non-success. Who are you to determine these things? How can you take what streams out of you and cram it into a superficially constructed box? Would you degrade any other kind of natural release? Would you relegate blood flow or shouting or tears to a simple one-word title? This is your time to glow in full vulnerability, to fall head over heels for every blundering, beautiful thought within you, so build a bridge between you and the paper that will be strong enough to bear your weight. Then cross it.

iii. Know who you are writing for. It should be yourself, not the one who holds your heart or the fire-faced figure in the park at dusk or people who make your soul twist. Write for brave, bruised you; wondering, powerful you. Always you.

iv. Rise above the need to match your creation to a preordained image in your mind. The two will never be the same and this is fine. Accept whatever you produce with tender detachment, then move forward. Remember that every literary icon has felt the same pounding dissatisfaction, and walked about tugging at their hair, frustrated and abashed. Remember they are no closer to divinity than you. Ultimately, we are all just shells through which a greater ocean sings, so let yours wail its melody as it likes.

v. Write without the tight egoic fist; write without a blueprint; write without fear. Write like it is your first day on earth and you are stunned with awe. Write like the caterpillar bursting from its cocoon, transformed, breathless. Write like that.

It’s so miniscule—
this interval, this growing up

You fool yourself
into believing
it won’t ever end,
as if you could turn it back
to the beginning
like a radio dial
and let that hot-pink rapture
pour over you
again and always
but eventually it comes
to a close
and as I look back on my own
I feel like digging it a grave,
giving it a proper ceremony

Here Lies a Brief Forever
the epitaph would say

Here lies unearthly hardship
my hands gripping that first notebook
a screen door thrown open
dresses I wore and grew out of
wildflowers picked too soon
a head scribbled dark with sadness
glitter and one-sided love
bathrooms I wept in
swooping optimism
woods astir with light
heartsick
surreal courage
evolution
expansion
people who didn’t understand and
people who did
moon dancing
the carpet where I spilled English Breakfast
the road where I slashed
my knee open
and blood flew everywhere
breakdowns
the rush of space between
vocals and bass drop
snowflakes blinked away
my father gone
my mother remaining
credit-rolling darkness and a girl
hair I wanted straight until
I didn’t
stars burning and seething
ice rinks
aloneness and unity and
aching forward motion

there’s a soft blossoming
at the core of us;
neighbor children have
begun making their chalky universes
on asphalt again
loud laughter rings along these
muted suburban streets
seeds tremble into bloom
the reappearance of sunbeams and bird flocks
and other splendid details
we’d forgotten during the cold
delights us

now is the time to step out
of our old skins
and waste breath on dandelion wishes
now is the time for these
chrysalis hearts to break open
and ascend
unbound at last

​I said you are
the purple veins of an orchid
quickening footsteps
mist clinging to pines
the dip in the waltz
a geode cleaved in two
tunnels thrumming their pulse
hitched breath
lungfuls of winter wind
the dusty burn of smoke two streets over
an invasion of fireflies
fields with moonlight beating down
pollen-ridden light

I said you are
picnics caught in the rain
and petals in the hair
stones glistening at low tide
and Vivaldi
sound waves from outer space
and ink smeared palms
a warm shoulder in the dark
and the snap of a wind-ruffled sail
heart pounding
and movement


I said you are
crystalline
rooted yet rootless
atomic, ultraviolet,
ineffable