i'm from a small, yellow bedroom
yellow flowers, yellow layette
and yellow jaundiced skin  
i'm from the taste of the tea mother makes me when i'm sick
and from the sound of her singing
about how she looked and looked for the light
like the roots and the leaves floating in the boiling water
her voice a soothing sound
like bubbles in simmering tea

i'm from words written on a page-
the feeling of an old book and the smell of a new one
and i'm from hiding beneath the covers
falling in love with black letters printed on white paper
i'm from lots of illustrations and then none at all
when my mind became colorful enough to fill all the pages
i'm from "the game is afoot"
and "after all this time?"

i'm from all over the world
pieces of my heart, a jigsaw puzzle
like my family scattered all over the globe
i'm from canada, from the US, from france from lebanon from italy
i'm from a country nobody wants
but a country that desperately wants us back

i'm from messy hair, oversized sweaters
half-finished sketchbooks filled with promises
and ******* poetry lines
i'm from the echo of my own voice
against the splatter of the shower
i'm from reading in the flashes of street lamp lights
i'm from pursuing science and desiring art
drawing on the airplane's foggy windows
and wondering how it flies
with a clear head and with clouded eyes.

i think someone stitched my pockets closed
and the fluorescent light above me flickers,
as if it's possessed by a lonely ghost.

these days grow softer, lines fading into watercolor
and my mouth tastes like a hundred cotton *****
from all these pills i've been prescribed to swallow.

i remember when i wanted to be loved,
now i only want the beating of my heart to cease
but the pulse in my wrists belongs to someone else
and when i look in the mirror, the creature i see isn't me.

sundays are the days i was tangled up in the sheets suffocating
and choking out sobs i couldn't form into proper words
if only her arms could finally envelop me in gentle darkness.

As I exit
the world of green dinosaurs
fused from abandoned rusty automobiles      
and steaming in  the sun,
a child offered me a giant peach
harvested from a Palisade tree
grown in the valley’s katabatic winds.
  
It tasted of harsh-sweet stolen pleasures,
lust and greed and love and dried fruit,
full of Ute tears and diverted waters,
memories between prayers and laments  
buried deep, sprouting new
on rolling plains laced with spice
breezes and Buffalo.

It had evolved flesh pregnant with two hemispheres  
to be split midway
by thumbs meant to be coated with pulp
juice pooling to palm lifelines.

I knew it fed me its sweetness
in cupped hands, not a gift
but a sacrifice to be sniffed
and tasted like an old vintage
barreled decades for a loving tongue.

Its red blush collapsed into
a  tawny mass that matched the day’s light,
remaining fuzzy flesh a gold skull—
the ancient colors full of guilt and redemption
and red shame and love and twilight,
a thing existing slightly
out of season, fully sweet
yet almost taboo, almost cursed,
the lustful last bite of life.

I bought a half dozen more peaches from the parent
standing slightly just behind the child
busy cradling them into a paper craft bag
rolling them into darkness far from light
and the frozen extinction crushed
by the din of overpass traffic from above.

I noticed the sun fade from the earth,
a scorned lover removing her gaze,
until there exists a tattoo
memory of love and ripening peaches.

I took the small change
aware that the peaches would rot to
mold, uneaten, unwanted, the pit unplanted.

Notes:

A katabatic wind  is a drainage wind, a wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a ***** under the force of gravity.

i wasn't always this way
i want you to know that
take it in
imagine me happy
imagine me full of life
I'm sorry that you didn't see that
I'm sorry that all you had was the destruction that i was

As midnight approaches
a calm floats over the terrain,
with the sweet sounds of night
and the patter of light rain.

Getting lost in the musical tones
thoughts drip of soft dew,
memory tickling giggles
a moment of Déjà vu.

A peacefulness through the heart
outside, the wind a soothing sound,
the light tapping of warm rain
hearts loving, souls bound.

Hearts of love, souls of light,
a touch of magic, rhythm and rhyme,
enchanting dreams, fill the night,
of love so beautifully divine.
~

somehow you found me and it was like-
pomegranate suns i could swallow.
i haven't been loved like this in a long time.

i remember when she first smiled sweetly,
danced lightly, and kissed my sour lips
and she said she loved me, but i knew the truth-

she intended to use my body like how mom scoops
out red melon flesh from a rind, to pierce my heart
with black pins and eyes that never looked right.

she whispered secrets to me and found my own.
exploited my nature and soon i was hitting her across the cheek.
she said she liked it and maybe she did, but i was crying.

when i try to speak it all comes up in tangled string
and people don't believe me, even when they can see it.
how could god make me a vessel only to be dissected.

now you're here and i can't even touch you without
flinching, without feeling a phantom fire of the pains
past "lovers" ignited, without a spark, a match.

you have a dark past, twisted through violet fumes.
so do i, but only a reflection of the pages in your book.
i'm tired of living with trauma, when we haven't moved in together.