i stand with my sisters --
hijab-wearing, undocumented
black, brown, beautiful, brilliant;
women who love women;
women who have the right
to answer to their names,
instead of a “sugar” or “honey” or “baby”
yelled by a stranger on a street corner;
terrific trans women;
women, who must have the right
to decide what should happen
to their own
bodies

i stand with my brothers --
men who love men
and men who are afraid to say that they do;
Muslim men, Latino men,
feminist men, trans men;
and those who are neither men or women,
non-binary friends of all shapes and sizes
and colors and creeds;
every person who has never felt
like they belonged

and i stand with my people --
the people of America.
we know deep in our hearts
that hate is not the answer;
and so we march on
and fight on
and force our voices out into the universe
and it is not futile,
it is not for nothing,
it will never be for nothing.

for those who believe
to love is the most important thing we'll ever do:
i stand with you.

1.
there are a thousand different ways to miss you.  

i am trying to wrap my head around the fact that you wanted me once and you don’t anymore. i am trying to count all of the things inside me, trying to find something i wouldn’t give up to make you love me again. i am trying to figure out what to do with my hands, where to put useless things.

our love was a castle, a fortress i was ready to die to defend. i didn’t want a big clamoring of drums and cymbals, i didn’t want the trumpets and the fanfare. i just wanted you to believe in me.

i wish i could have known that the last time i kissed you was the last time. i wish i could have known i was saying goodbye.

2.
there is a long list of things that i don’t know how to forget. i am slamming all the doors and throwing rocks at the mirror, singing songs to the moon and ripping pictures off the wall; it’s clear i don’t know how to do this.

i’m not sure if i’m actually angry with you or if it just feels good to want something, to put my body in motion. either way, your necklace is in the trash and i can’t undo it. set the barn on fire, set the horses running free, break the windows while you’re at it. it won’t matter, it won’t feel as good as you want it to, and what’s the point of all the violence, anyway? there is nowhere to put the blame, so here it is, sitting in your hands, and you don’t know how to put it down.

3.
there is so much i want to say to you but i don’t know how to spit it past my teeth.

i’ve stopped waking up in the middle of the night, i’ve started being grateful for any small victory. i’m figuring out where everything fits, what to do with all of the parts of me you have touched. i am closing the books, i am shutting my dreams away in drawers, i am patiently waiting for everything to stop being so hard.

here i am at your feet. i didn’t know what to do with my love, so here it is, an offering. here are my hands, turned up at the wrists.

i don’t think i know how to want anyone else.

I wish I could write an angry breakup poem,
you know, the whole nine yards --
breaking plates, screaming, throwing your clothes out the window.
I felt like I wanted to set something on fire
but when I went to tear your pictures off the wall
my hands were suddenly much too gentle,
wondering all over again
why it had to happen this way.

I hate how you never cleaned your car and never shaved your beard
I hate how you drive too fast, I hate that you never came to visit me at school
I hate that you still told me you loved me even it wasn’t true, but most of all
I hate how you couldn’t give me a reason
for not wanting me anymore

and here I am, stuffing your memories into a drawer and shutting it tight
here I am, staring at the ceiling at 3 am and forgetting how to eat,
sitting on the floor and staring into space
and losing track of time,
sitting at the top of the stairs where no one can hear me in the act of missing
and wishing so badly that I was enough for you

I wish I could write an angry breakup poem
just so I could have something to wound you with
but we both know that isn’t really what I want,
what I want is for you to lie to me.

tell me that you want me to stay.

your patient hands waiting, waiting, waiting for me.

i am not easy to manage, and neither are you. we exist here, together, two problems, each other’s solutions, all at once.

i’ll never forget that week you were in the hospital. i think back to who i was then, a pale girl with a fistful of car keys, bursting through the radiology ward, intense and very afraid and full of something she couldn’t describe. for you: anything. i could have sat by your side and looked at you forever, letting myself take you in, mine and yours and yours and mine until there wasn’t distance between us anymore.

and even when all i can hear is your voice on the other end of the phone line, when all i can do is listen as you describe a night sky i can’t see underneath a haze of city lights, it’s both enough and terribly not enough. i can’t stop thinking about how much bigger you have made my heart, like my entire ribcage cracked open just to make room for you.

you are so patient for me and i am trying to be patient for you. i am here, sitting on top of clock towers and singing to the moon. i am here, ticking off the days on the calendar until i can see you again. i am here, i am here. i am still right here.

what i remember most is how perfectly your tiny hands fit in mine

you let me sleep in your bed every night i was in buffalo. you cooked me pancakes, you played jazz records on vinyl, you gave me your sweatshirt and sent me poems in the mail

endless laughs and chai tea and big blue eyes, you are a brilliant universe unto yourself

i can’t believe i treated your beautiful heart so carelessly

your dog never liked me. maybe she knew i’d break your heart someday

“your body is so beautiful,” he whispers to me, 2:30 am parked in my driveway, breath heating up the windows, hands tracing patterns on my skin

your body is so beautiful. this is a body that has stepped on the scale eight times a day, brain noting every slight change in the number that blinks back. your body is so beautiful. this body has cried from hunger pains, has sat on ***** bathroom floors with ******* pressed inside my throat, praying for strength i didn't have

your body is so beautiful. a body that has spent countless hours in front of the mirror, picked apart and scrutinized from every angle; a body that’s been stuffed and starved, emptied and filled, hated and cursed – this is it, this is the body he means

i’ve known boys who have used words as nothing more than keys to unlock doors inside me, who have strung together letters and sounds as nothing more than a means to achieve an end. i’ve known boys who have made promises never intended to be kept, whispered words in parking lots and quiet cars and city streets that have never amounted to what they implied

“your body is so beautiful,” he whispers to me, and against all odds, he means it. and even if he doesn’t, to like this body when i’m with him is enough, to feel at home in this skin is enough

and to hold his hand in mine is enough,
and to see him smile at me from across the room is enough

the thing about mountains is that there is only one peak and the rest is all downhill *****, nothing but raw material for an avalanche.

i don’t think you’re willing yet to see inside all the dusty corners of me, the places where the paint has chipped and there’s a drip in the ceiling and the tiles are coming up.

i didn’t kiss you back on the porch because i wanted to be fixed;

what i wanted was to dig deeper inside the gaping hole of what is already wrong with me.

the thing about setting people on pedestals and mountain peaks is that they will eventually fall

and the best thing you can do when it happens is to rip your eyelids off like band-aids.

--

i am discovering that it is possible to be both entirely certain and entirely uncertain at the same time.

there is only so far you can push me and then i swear

you will have to pick between the body and the girl within the body, so what’ll it be?

you don’t get to have that dream you so desperately want. you get this, you get me, or you can have somebody else,

but i don’t really want that, and that’s where the question is: how much of myself will i give away to keep you?

you didn’t ask me if what you did was okay, you didn’t let me choose, you didn’t ask for consent. these are facts.

--

the thing about mountains is that a snowball rolling down the side can grow to the side of a buick if you leave it alone long enough.

the thing about me is that sometimes my tongue flies straight of out of my mouth if you ask me to talk about things that matter.

here we are again, raw material for an avalanche,

and the tip of the peak is not as stable as i hoped it would be.

tell me you want me, baby,

tell me i’m not going to ruin this.

i guess the thing about people is that they never really want to change, do they?