i didn't know you quite well
i just knew you hated
yourself
and loved disney films
and musicials

(i hate musicials and disney)

we sat at the same lunch table
2013
i remember your cotton sleeve
wiping across the corner of my left eye
because there was a storm brewing in them
and it flooded

you talked of
that boys don't know
better
and told me to stay
strong

how can someone who is not strong themselves
encourage me to do something
that they can't even triumph

you fell ill around december
or was it november?
i can't remember.
you almost followed the footsteps
of your lost nephews (two and five)
why couldn't you absorb your nutrition?
was your destiny to see the mortician?

(no.)

but you left the hilly suburbs of ohio
to go where the sand storms
and the palm trees sway
and the salty bays lay.

alex, alexandria
(defender of man)
i still remember those sleepless green eyes
filled with defeat and woe
and yards of wavy tangled brown hair
that flowed.

The bath water
is the colour of my eyes;
yet, I don't know
which is wetter.

she greets them with a smile
           she goes home and she cries
"we haven't seen you happy in a while!"
          "my smile is full of lies,"
she's just really cold,
          her wrists are stained red
"you're doing well," she's told
          she wants to be dead
they're glad she's okay
          she tried to take her life
she said she's happy today
          as she played with a knife
she said she wasn't hungry
          she's desperate to e thin
she lives happy and free
          but will let her sadness win
she's going to bed
          she's going to die
she swallows pills then lays down her head
          her life was a lie

you hold me on wires by my spine like i'm a puppet and you're the puppeteer,
the wires dancing out of orbit as similar as power lines wrestling a storm or
electrons that are never at a certain point at any time. your misaccuracy
reminds me of a pinpoint on a map because it never touches the destination
on point, and i absorb the attention you provide like polymer gel ***** with
water, but you are the most unstable puppeteer i've ever known, smiling
through smoke and blindfolding me covering me in black and blue camoflauge
throwing me in the fire, drowning me in the deep depths of the ocean,
and laughing as i sink in denial and crave the inevitable let down

- kra

the nagging pinpricks that flower in my chest
every time i hold my tongue
when i could take a stand
exhaust me.
some days i wish i were not stirred
by every minor injustice,
by every casual -ism.
i am not all angles and shards.
some days i am soft lines and rounded edges,
some days i am petal-small and twice as fragile,
some days i am tired.
some days the inevitable backlash
of speaking my mind
can send me reeling.
the accumulation of anger and dismissal and mockery
piles upon my shoulders
and seems sometimes too heavy to carry.

but even on these days,
these quiet, glass-***** lows,
i know why i am fighting, and
i know to the core of my being that
i
will
never
stop.