i cry after i *** now
and when i smell make up wipes
or look through your likes

someone tried to give me
advice
the other day

they said
i should find a new hobby
something that i didn’t do before
or during you

so i started planting flowers
and i find it very interesting to watch them grow
i sit outside and cry next to the ones that don’t

i bury fallen petals into soil
to decompose and seep
into the roots to replenish others

i find myself posting their colors
and their growth
online
for everyone to see

including you
i always check if you’ve seen
i guess that defeats the purpose of my hobby

It's been drilled in every poor man's head,
by a man only slightly less poor
"money cannot buy happiness."
But I disagree!
If you say that,
You have not watched your father scream at God at 7 in the morning,
questioning His existence,
as we get kicked out of
the second house that year.

I no longer find excitement
in new places.

You've never waited for the first of the month.
Every month.
In order to eat something other than spaghetti
and dollar store hot dogs.

You've never had your power shut off for an entire month
And watch as your family rips apart,
boiling water on the stove just to bathe.

Your parents owe everyone money.

You've never worked in order to buy your cleats, yearbooks, and school supplies.
Only to have your parents take that money, too.

You can send your vibes,
and tell me to think positive.
But the world is distorted!
Our lives are only better now because my family got jobs.

Before,
I watched a bulldozer
go through the house I grew up in,
as the bank sold our home
and built an auto-parts store over dirt
I used to ride my bike on.
The last pieces of my grandmother, crumbled.
My father stayed up every night
and slept through every holiday and birthday, since.

Is that happiness?

it brushes against bones
and seeps into i
suddenly i am envisioning
sweaty hands shaking at fabric seams
of jeans worn thrice that week
they are my hands now
and the lips ask that the hands are okay
they are
they move on and
the body comes with
hoping to come
the fingers try on their own to undo buttons
at the waist
the worn come down over
slightly damp legs and bruised knees
that show hairs that the body would prefer not to
show but
i don’t mind
the lips are dry now
as they rub against skin
and the hands are wet as they do the same
but elsewhere
teeth grip tight to hold in air
and sound
and hands press against the wall
to be steady
and they slide down with a breath of relief
and release

afterwards
my hands cover my own skin
like a mask

cheeks are red with sweat and
embarrassment
vulnerability

everything is slower now
you laugh and ask if I’m okay
i am

when I came back to Ohio
I was just ready to get away from the heat
I was ready to lose myself in different bodies
I was ready to see things familiar to me
but the only thing waiting for me
was unfamiliar feelings
and a strange face
I say strange in the most beautiful way possible
and I never slept around
my mind melted from Alabama heat
quickly cooled and hardened again
It was my first week back but
from then on I knew
I stood no chance
it would engulf me as swift and brute as melting rock

.

I say it comes in waves
Because it is not a constant
It doesn't always hurt
It doesn't hold me under the water every second that I breathe
But when it comes
a simple, brisk wave is no way to describe the way this engulfs my being
when I remember how you kissed me
No this pain is much more like
I am anchored to the bottom of the sea
I am unable to breathe
my finger tips are barely reaching the air
They nip the very end of the water but they can't quite reach out to signal for help
They can't grasp any chain
It is right there in front of me
But i have failed to hold on
I slip
You were always just a touch out of my reach
You could say it comes in waves
But many things do
I've always gotten sick at sea
I know you want me to get out of the water
But you keep washing your hair in the shores
my body is stiff every time I realize that's all it is
And that's all it will be

A simple, brisk wave
And I will always have my feet in these waters

Summer is hot and sticky air
Cooled down with water you aren't sure
If you should be swimming in

But you dare yourself to try

sleeping all day
Or not at all
But you never sleep at night

Summer is washing your face in the sink
to convince yourself you aren't tired

In the summer you find my words bleeding through your veins
and burying themselves in your skin

You think back to winter
everytime you see the white of your knuckles
creeping through your skin
as your fists unknowingly clench
to convince yourself you are fine

Summer is washing your hair twice a day
to convince yourself you aren't thinking of me

Summer is a warm night in a big shirt
Summer is the girl you met too late
Or not at all

Summer is realizing maybe you don't have that many friends
It is also realizing that is okay

Summer is ***** shoes
and straight teeth
good news
and clean sheets

Summer is hot and the weather changes at night
It is too immense and too short to let her go
or to waste anymore time washing your face in the sink and washing your hair
twice a day
Because you a r e tired
you are thinking of me

Summer is the girl you met too late
and you aren't sure if you should be swimming in this water

But you dare yourself to try

Sand always finds a way to cling itself to the bodies of those who try to ignore him with towels or wash him away with showers. I told myself I never really cared for the beach anyway, but that sand stayed with me, making me long for the ocean water to kiss the shore one last time. Longing for summer nights, longing for her. We made sand castles and she buried me in every grain, laughing, taking pictures, loving. One night I swore I saw her, I reached out

but a gust of wind came, almost as bad as the storm that had washed us away before. And then she was gone again, clinging to my body, lingering my home, despite the towels and countless showers. I never really cared for the beach anyway

You're still in everything I do but
you keep washing my words off your skin
like a stain on your favorite shirt

I can't do anything without keeping you in mind
I can't do anything
I wonder when I will start doing things again without them in someway being for you


But you are not

Your body rests in my head
While you rest your head on her body
She leaves scratches on your back and skin where my words only laid briefly

My mom needs me to get out of bed
But I am stuck with a water logged chest
I cannot get you out of my head

And even though it was brief
I still remember your arms woven around me
I remember the light scratch of your nails
Dancing across my back while the music played
as if it were brail
Like you were searching for some kind of message written in my bare skin but


It was a message I didn't have

sometimes writing is better when
you are writing for yourself to heal
not when you are expecting anyone to see
and certainly not when it is for someone


my writing has always been ****

Sometimes I just stare blankly at my wall
Looking at the emptiness of my hands
I am expressionless as I try to count the grains of sand
But they are long gone

How was I supposed to know
how ******* impossible it is to hold on to sand

******* sand

When something hurts
people always say
"This hit me like a ton of bricks."
Like a car running directly into a solid wall
It is completely totaled
But the car stops immediately when this happens
No one considers the lifeless bones in the body inside of the ******* car are still going 60 miles per hour
And you wonder why I can't get over this
How was I ever supposed to know it was going to stop
The body doesn't freeze when the car stops and that's what kills a person
They are hitting the windshield
They're trying to keep going
Even if you slam on your breaks before you hit the wall
You still jolt forward and the seatbelt still hurts your chest
Your body was not ready for the car to stop

I was running down a hill and my feet had picked up a pace and eventually I was unable to control how fast I was going
It almost feels like your feet have a mind and entire body of their own at that point
They are just carrying you
I was getting carried away
My feet can't just ******* stop when I'm half way down a hill

How was I supposed to know
How am I supposed to stop?

How could I know you were the sand running away from my hands and back into your own familiar oceans

How could I have considered my body would not stop with the car
My body will eventually hit the bricks
but what difference does it make
Sand is so small and fine it seeps through the cracks in brick walls and rests in the crevices
and when the water comes it'll be gone again
I understand now why I stay
staring blankly at my wall
this ******* brick wall
looking at the emptiness of my hands
I am expressionless as I try to count the grains of sand
but they are long gone

I wasn't trying to feel better anymore
I was trying to feel *something

I have nothing left to write
I have reached a point where I am too sad
to turn it into art
or something beautiful
Sadness is not here to be a metaphor
it is trying to drown you
There is nothing beautiful about that
my pen wants nothing to do with it

I clean my room really nice
and fill it with these fake flowers
I light the candles
for a second I think it helps with my mental health
but subconsciously I know
I'm doing it hoping someone will notice the time I've put into it
or that there will even be someone in my room at all to notice
just someone to **** me
I'm so tired of myself
I blame it on everyone else
I say I'm so sick of this
But I'm sick
There's something wrong with me
And that's why no one is interested
I leave the blinds wide open
I always have
no one cares about the flowers in my room

No one even knows what my room looks like
let alone the flowers

She tells me to move on
So that she can suppress her feelings and get on with old love
This is all fine

I feel sick as

I cannot force a flower to bloom
The petals would ruin
This flower was blooming for me
But we are young
And so just like every little kid
When they see a pretty garden
In their own backyard
I picked this flower too soon

You still need to grow

Where am I supposed to turn?
When we were supposed to be together
But will and supposed to
Have proven to be
Antonymous

it's beyond ironic
I'm writing you this poem
Themed around flowers
Comparing you to flowers

And the way everything
makes me think of you
The same way everything
makes you think of her

I am mislead
Maybe you aren't suppressing anything
I always get mixed up

You hate flowers

bare feet on a
cold bathroom floor or maybe
it was the kitchen
or both

I don't remember exactly my
cheeks were flushed
and you were sort of dancing

Bare ankles and boxers
from the night before
I haven’t brushed my teeth
we ate eggs and toast and you laid
under my armpit i didn’t
have a shirt on

My jewelry is crooked
from pressing my body against yours
my hair is falling out of a knot

Think of the same woman
dancing in the verses above
staring at a windshield
not out of it or through it
but at the rain stained glass

There weren’t clouds in sight
she feels empty
with no words, it’s easier that way

I’d give you my skin
to relieve what your nerves
did to yours
from what others have said or never did
but i don’t think you need it


I hope your rain days
feel the same as summer
mornings and winter afternoons
because mine do

I think you were never not here
your wash rag hangs next to
mine now
in the shower in your favorite color

We have to push my cat
away from scratching us
when we’re kissing in bed

And i’ll keep waking up
early
just for five minutes of
holding you consciously
I’m glued

And because of that
I’ll be late to work
and you’ll bring me my medicine
Because i forgot again

And to make sure
i ate that day
you’ll bring me toast

My recent writing has been all over the place.
My thoughts are all you.
My writing now lives in scatter plots
and the hair that you made messy with your gentle hands.
The cluttered sheets beneath your back
as you are beneath me.
They rest themselves in lips that linger
as they barely press themselves against
bare shoulders and cold necks.
Teeth hitting teeth.
There is no precision.
That would be impossible.
And yet it seemed foolproof, perfect.

I don't know if I am really talking about my writing anymore.

It was brief.
I still remember your arms woven around me.
I remember the light scratch of your nails,
dancing across my back
as if it were brail.
Like you were searching for some kind of message
written in my bare skin,
but you soon realized


it was a message I didn't have.

my stomach would knot
and she did not stop
when she would leave a hundred craters in my head.
It came all at once and stopped just the same
It was so fast and unexpecting and
it was immense and terrifying and exciting

and then gone

there were no warnings
On either side.
I cannot comprehend what this is
Or why it has ripped me apart

But she was broken, too.

I have never been to space
Or seen a meteor shower
Every time I had planned to finally catch one
I had always gotten outside just
a second too late
Meteor showers are bright and terrifying and exciting
and quite intense if you are too close
they are quick

And they are gone.
And meteors hit the moon's atmosphere

they become broken, too

While they leave a hundred craters in the moon

she washes me away
like I never wanted to be there in the first place

She was captivating.
She forced you to reconcile
with your name
and the word queer
together for the first time.

It was new and you
only spoke it into existence
for her.
A vulnerability impossible to escape,
but you weren't worried.

She had pretty teeth
and thick eyebrows.
You felt an insurmountable
amount of love for her in a month,
than you had felt for any boy ever.

You weren't worried
until you were.
Women are gentile and kind.
They are caring and safe.
Until they're not.

You are fifteen.
Living behind closet doors,
thick enough to mask your queerness.
It squeaks when it opens,
you prefer it closed.

Your father explained the word, "disown"
with examples.
"Like, if you're a **** you have to move out."
She used that as a stick
to beat you with.

You cry, knees to chest in the shower.
She's told everyone,
while she manipulates and forces
you to believe you're guilty
of being embarrassed of her.

So you begin beating
on the closet doors,
every beating.
No one can hear your screams.
Part of you still doesn't want them to.

You could try calling the police,
but who would believe
a woman is beating another woman.
Besides,
there's no service in this closet.

You learn about domestic violence
from your parents.
They say they'd protect you.
But if they knew
they'd beat you back into silence.

If a tree
collapses in the middle of the forest
with bruises from someone
that isn't a husband,
or a boyfriend,
or a man at all,
Is she still a victim?
is the collision enough
to break down a closet door?