if i could write anything beautiful
that didn't have a thing to do with you
     i'd have written my way to the moon and back
on a path built of college-ruled yellow lines

There is a
Chuck Taylor black energy connecting  
Every one of my couch’s teens
But please don’t generalize a single spirit
And especially stay away from adjectives like
“angsty” and “misunderstood”
Never accuse them of such a cliché travesty
At such an age spotlighted syndrome  stage
The Sufjan Stevens song she brings in has the same yearning
That another’s canon snaps with trapped black and whites
That same shadow tangos with the forced-into-therapy-tween’s
faint scalloped smile lines
of times before, when she had not been hunting for her own identity
When she could spin around the willow
And not worry about her eyelet ******* peeking through
Then the cloud covered eighteen year old daisy
Drags amber strands across forehead while she murmers
Blame that oozes from her juvenile jawline, mirroring
The prior sweetheart that stormed out of my office at 3:00pm
Tawny strands across her wrist
And how could I ever forget the last string of fiber
Fierce and cross armed  
The last knot to the cat’s cradle of adolescent midnight string
“I know I will conquer my genetic hand”
She declares
Bubblegum harbored in fleshy cheek
Whiskers and all.

I hold sacred in my bones
The appendage I am in all of this
wide eyed need
And I let the walls absorb their sighs
Until, in awe I witness
the beauty in vulnerability  
Again