you burst blackberries between
your fingers. blue juices, sweet somehow,
drip down the curve of your wrist, bleed
like ink over the soft lines of the palm,
skin-colored fortune tellers. the spilled
blackberries leave letters in their ink-paths
here; perhaps an anagram of my name.
now sun calls you daughter. she nursed
you in her light-womb, watched history
unfold on earth like a crane stretching
its feathers. dropped you like a blessing
and brought the first sunset, beckoning sky’s
cotton-candy pinks, sugar-coated cream,
freshly-squished blackberry colours. dancing
down your hands still, sweet, saccharine
ink; all earth’s berry bushes stretch their
twig-arms toward you. the apple trees
call you sister, pick you bouquets of
honeysuckle. sun warmed their blossoms,
they say. their smell is smooth and sugared,
melting in your rosy-fingered hands,
like soft slices of daybreak, snippets of
syrupy dawn. you are eve now, stretching
bare skin in twilight, opening love-laden palms to
blooming bushes of roses, plucking them from
their stems like petal-coated candies; the apex of
nature, zenith of earth’s creatures. a thousand
years wax and wane; beyond the limits of time,
you are one with sky, all the sweet seconds in
history condensed. you pop a blackberry
into your mouth, delicate ink-skin bursting.

as a young girl
I told my mother
I would never get married
and I stuck by that
for years

I got a boyfriend
but I knew
I was never
going to
actually
marry him

but as time goes on
and I get older
and people around me
are getting married
and starting lives
I keep listening to love songs
and noticing
what I want
in a husband

and I am not one
to settle
or settle down
but I made a
google doc
devoted to songs
I want played at my wedding
even though
I've never wanted
a wedding

my loneliness keeps creeping
in
watching me
but
I've finally
succumbed to it
and I want
to make it go away

and for the first time
in my ever expanding
life
I want to stop being alone
and can't stop pondering
childlike
dream wedding
fantasies

****

we are like stars, like dying embers,
clusters of us and only one
explodes.

my dreams have turned me into desire,
and i wonder where my desire will take me,
i wonder what my desire will make me.

will i be like star, or ember,
or will i be like the fireworks at night,
the ones no one notices until they explode.

that boom sounds like my heartbeat
-it’s still looking for a beat.
hasn’t found one yet.

hasn’t found one yet,
but it seems to beat for you.

darling, you know i love the stars.
at night, they light up the sky,
they’re brilliant and i can’t not love them.

you’re a star of mine,
brilliant,
but do you fade?

in the morning, will you still seem
bright,
or beautiful?

are you even there?

i’m scared you only glow at night,
and that my eyes will lose you,
and my heart will just beat somewhere else.

will you stay in the morning,
or will you be gone
like the fireworks last night?

summer nights are best spent with you.
greedily scarfing down ice cream,
watching our feet touch the sky from old playground swings.

and the ones in your mom’s car
-the soft music, the hard music
singing to melodies that we’ll never know.

each night, we feel each’s wishes.
i, i want to give you fairs, and cotton candy,
and hold your hand as we walk along the sidewalk.

i want to twirl you around,
because though we’re very summer friends
i want to keep you forever.

our feet scrape the gravel,
toes tap the sidewalk,
noses breathe in the air.

distinctly, i remember something
-us in a concert,
our shoulders brushing as we danced.

i remember laughing with you in the water,
because i hated being short,
so naturally i had to climb you.

i remember every year
we laugh away these nights,
until they become memories.

they, were, definitely,
polaroid worthy.
you’d give a blank look.

and then spring would come again,
and we’d be sitting in your mom’s car,
watching the sunset again.

remember this?

it’s getting cold.
her work begins to pile up on her desk,
paper cascading around her off the table,
sitting ignored as she thumbs through a book,
humming softly.

and she feels ever colder,
because though she knows the sun will touch her face one last time,
she feels the impending sense of everything changing.
her freedom, her sleep, and all those books
-piling up around her in dizzying towers she can’t seem to hold upright.

each poem has become an ode.
no longer does she right those summer love poems,
notes of dreams and pining and romance.
she’s grown lonely,
and grown up.

each ode is to who she was
-the kind girl with the widest eyes and strong opinions,
this new girl with no focus,
drifts and watches the ink run down the page.
she’s so worried, because she doesn’t care.
and doesn’t care about that.

tomorrow will be better,
she says, sighing with tiredness repeating over and over again.
tomorrow.
tomorrow.
tomorrow.

but the pounding in her head won’t go away,
and all the doubts sink in
-you’ve lost your edge.
-you’re not doing enough.
-you’re never going to do enough unless you break.

her heart seems to beat colder,
slow down and she’s not that old.
she’s young, and she feels herself,
the brightness and ambition disappearing,
and they’re replaced by content and a sense of emptiness.

The sun never shines
in downtown
Theres no merry go round
Nor the sweetest sound
in downtown .
There's no pleasant air
And nobody cares
lifes so unfair
  in downtown.
Such an unwelcoming sight
When your out  at night
Walking the streets brings no delight
Your caught in a trap and can't take to flight
in downtown.
There are no bars or  sound of cars
All you have are many scars
  in downtown .
Now this is the news
That can help you through
There is a way out of downtown
For there's not such a place  
you need not fear nor dread
Its just those thoughts inside your head.

What if
I had fallen to my knees
On the cold parking lot concrete
Tears washing over my cheeks
And cries no one should ever have to hear
Bellowing out from beneath my ribs
Screaming at the sky
Looking up at your face
Forcing you
(and everyone else)
To see me in this godforsaken state
Of absolute chaos
Heartbreak
In it's rawest form
What if I had begged you to stay?
What if I'd told you I can't do this without you?
What if I'd told you how much I needed you
What if I did anything other than fighting back the tears
Maybe for myself, maybe for you,
Mostly for the crowd of people gathering
Saying their goodbyes
Anxiously looking around to bear witness to everyone else's reactions
And I didn't want to be that girl
That girl who falls to the ground
Kicking and screaming and crying and begging
But what if I was?
What if I was any girl other than the one I pretended to be that day
The one that held her tongue and kept her mouth shut because she knew the second she opened it to speak she would sob
The one that wrapped her arms around you for the last time,
and the one that let go
The one that couldn't bear to watch you walk away
So she kissed you goodbye
Got back in the car
And drove home
What if i wasn't that girl who didnt allow herself to completely fall apart until she was alone in the privacy of her own home?
What if instead I'd made a scene,
Doing what everything inside me so desperately wanted to
Grabbing hold of your hand and refusing to let go
Losing the facade of confidence
The charade of strength
But I'm not that girl
And I never will be
So each and every time you leave
I kiss you goodbye
I unclench my fists and retract my anchors
I untether my heart from it's human home
And I put on a brave face
Maybe for myself, maybe for you,
Or maybe
For that girl.

Hey mom-dad, listen.
Hit me, hate me, throw me out,
But don't shut me up.

as i'm laying down tonight
i think of how exhausting it is to wash you off my fingers
even if it's not like i ever get to hold your hand
or touch you, for that matter.
but everynight i have to wash your essence off my fingers
like trying to get rid of gasoline but always ending up
setting myself aflame. and that despite
knowing how dangerous and hazardous that **** could be
you just couldn't stop because you love the smell of gasoline
that fills up your lungs like pumps of adrenaline
right before the stench of your own burning flesh
chokes you to death. most nights, i wash you off like paint.
you can tell that i'm trying to forget what
i bled after your face appeared on the plain canvass
when my hand automatically reaches up and
perfectly colors your lips, and i couldn't help
but resemble them to pastel pink petals
of the roses growing in royal gardens
and i know i'm fooling everyone
making them believe that such expertise
is achieved because
your bottom lip have felt my gentle stroke when i
don't even know how your lips would feel when they quiver
under a curious and longing touch.
so i watch the colors spiral down the drain.
i watch my hands brush against each other
so intensely, trying to scrub the paint gone even
if it won't go away. even if the blood is clean.
even if i look clean.
how can loving you secretly be ever clean?
i'm scared it will never go away.
i am a painter in my own sense, capturing a glimpse
of something so intoxicating and aesthetically forbidden
then turning it into something tangible.
this is how painters show that their hearts
collapse with just a name
with just a glance not meant for their way.
and they paint what little of the hope
that shouldn't have been there in the first place
and every night. every single night they would aim
tirelessly to turn it into something they could allow.
something that could exist not only in my head.
something that i can call mine even if you
don't know that i am yours
and i knew this because your face
have begun to fill every blank wall
in my ******* house and i wonder how it is
possible to fall in love with someone the whole world
believes you shouldn't.
they say that when we turn our hands into fists
it is the size of our hearts.
and sometimes after the long hours of painting
i wash my paint-stained hands clean of
an abstract myriad of yellow and blue and black
and red. red for blood. red for love. red for fire.
i wash my paint-stained hands
turning them into fists
so maybe, just maybe
it will be the same
as getting rid of the colors off my young broken heart.
colors for you.
yet i always end up washing them off
with ******* gasoline.
and you still dare to call me 'smart'

She can walk
          between
             night and day
               never letting either
                  get in her way.
She learned this trick
                     many moons ago
                                by
                     going deep within
           and never letting it show.
Her soul is innocent
her heart is pure
she’s gone through more
than most could endure.
            She’s an angel of light
                 an angel of dark
                 you never know
              what you will spark.
                      You want to hurt her?
                         Please, go ahead and try
                           she’ll be the one to show you
                                  just how well she can
                                                              f
­                                                                l­
                                                                ­  y.
                                  Her soul innocent
                    her heart pure
      but never think for one minute
that she’s not secure.
                                Say what you will
                          please, do what you must
                       but your jealousy and hatred
                             won’t waver her trust!
~