you’re like art or something --
i don’t understand you and i always think i’m supposed to.
you remind me of stealing from my parent’s liquor cabinet,
i can’t look at you too long without feeling like
i’m gonna get caught up in something.
i can’t look at you too long without feeling like
i’m breaking some sort of rule.
now i know that love was the first time i saw weezer live,
that love was losing your voice because you’re singing too loud,
that love was pressing you down the backseat of your car,
that love was censored out of this poem.
too explicit. too tongue and teeth.
love was an honest liar.
love was at least 70% proximity, maybe.
love was not a victory march, just the drive the home.

we are terrified of it, maybe that’s why we like it.
there is no litmus test for love. just trial and error.
just… a lot of error.
love is hotel room we’re never going back to.
we existed there once
but we time ran out and had to return our keys, go home from vacation.
there are no good poems that come from that.
just 2 AM and missed calls and quiet.

see, i am bad at doing simple things.
my hands shake too hard and ruin dreams.
i hold too hard or push even harder.
baby, you were never hard to love, i just wasn’t any good at it.
see, i can write three page poems about the curve of your eyelashes
or the way your laugh sometimes gets stuck
in the back of your throat like a secret,
but i cannot seem to look you in in the eye
and be honest with you.

so tell me what to do when you’re staring god asking if he exists,
tell me what to do when every shot you’ve taken has missed.
tell me what to do when you’re standing on a dance floor
after all the music is gone,
like the fifth of july when all the fireworks have faded out of the sky
and all that’s left is casings and matches.
tell me what to do when you run out of words.

it's tempting sometimes.
the impulse to withdraw all the money from my bank account
and drive down I70 until the scenery changes,
the impulse to wander without bothering to find anything
let alone myself.
the impulse to disappear.
but impulses are just impulses,
i think this is just the way my mind convulses
and, obviously, i can't do any of those things.
or maybe i just feel like i can't do any of those things.
i mean, i've got responsibilities i've got people counting on me.  
i can't just up and leave my life
even though sometimes i'm itching to like i've got poison ivy
crawling all over my skin.
speaking of poison, i've heard people theorize that
maybe oxygen is slow-acting poison, taking all of our lives
to **** us under the guise of "natural causes"
i think if you stay anywhere long enough
the air becomes polluted, the air gets toxic.
my highschool art teacher,
who was incidentally a real conspiracy theory kind of guy,
once told our class that we're all too locked into our realities.
that life is only what we perceive it.
i had snickered along with the rest of the class,
the rest of the unwilling congregation to his soapbox pulpit,
because that's what people do when they're uncomfortable.
now i guess i wish i was a little less locked into my own reality.
i guess i wish i could be the kind of person
who bought plane one-way plane tickets and could be reckless
without first getting tangled in the repercussions.
i think the problem with running is
that no matter where i ran i'd still be me.
most people tie their feet to the train tracks of inevitability,
they will build a house there until it falls down around them.
they will live there until they're evicted,
with their hands still clenched in the sheets
and their feet planted in the backyard.
most people never leave where they grew roots.
but, see, the problem with roots is that unless you want to die
you can't ever pull them out completely.
i am always going to be from somewhere.
i am always going to be from here.
i am always going to be myself.
but life is a work in progress and i'm ******* working on it,
i'm not where i want to be
but as long as i know where i've been,
i don’t ever have to go back to where i was again.
my head is so crowded that sometimes i think it's exceeding its occupancy.
i think that i'm going to start having to get rid
of pieces of myself to make everything fit.
sometimes i just want to lose all my thoughts along the interstate
like i lose them halfway through a poem
i'm not quick enough to write down.
my head is like a graveyard with good ideas
buried under cracked tombstones that no one leaves flowers on.
sometimes i think of my brain as a black hole,
a place where light gets lost and doesn't come back out the same.
sometimes i think of my brain as a moratorium,
a place where dreams go
to get dressed for their funeral processions.
but sometimes i think of my brain as midas,
any idea can be golden if i get my hands on it.
sometimes i just want to hold my coalmine heart so tightly
that all that's left is diamonds.
the thing is, sometimes my brain is a like a black hole
and sometimes my brain is like a galaxy.
on my good days i'm golden, on my bad days i'm falling apart
and i lose a couple more more of my pieces every time i hit the ground.
but it's all internal; i think if i were to self-destruct
it wouldn't even make a sound.
and so often i think of the world as a battlefield,
i think i was born in the trenches instead of the home front.
i think i found myself in the worst place to get lost.
we went to bed as children
and woke up with the world on our shoulders
we went to bed as innocent and woke up as soldiers.
and you can't save people from themselves,
even though we've spent the last few millennia trying to.
we're like that sometimes, we never learn.
and even when i was drowning six feet under gasping for air,
you never needed to save me from myself,
my shadow is more than just the reflection of somebody else.
so go on, get your armor
so go on, get your battle scars
so take aim, so don't be ashamed
it's uphill sometimes but i kind of think we're getting there,
even if i don't always know where is.
sometimes you don't sink or swim,
you just thrash around until you start floating
our life jackets are all labeled "here's to hoping, here's to coping"
so **** your horoscopes.
you only listen to it when it tells you what you want to hear anyways.
so don't go to bed, kid, stay wide awake.
it's better for dreaming, it's better for scheming.
nobody is going to hand you your destiny,
you've got to ******* fight for it.
and we're all learning how to open our eyes
when we get pulled under by the tide and lick the salt off our teeth.
and if you're searching for purpose,
for something that might be worth this,
i can tell you where not to look.
kid, i've been there.
**** it, most days i still am there.
i built a house out of deflated life preservers there
and was surprised when it didn't float me home.
but this is what i know now:
i know i have a choice in how i look at this world.
am i going to focus on the brutal or the beautiful?
because for all the ugly there is so much that’s still lovely,
so don't let this ******* of a world steal your bright eyes,
cutting your eyelashes down to size.
don't let this ******* of a world tell you to settle for anything.
and when they tell you about icarus like a warning sign,
ask them "what good is a cautionary tale that doesn't **** up?"

when i was six years old my whole family went to disney world and being the self-respecting born and bred star wars fans we were, my brother and i cajoled our parents into letting us buy pictures of our little faces photoshopped onto the faces of star wars characters.

my brother? anakin skywalker. and me? aayla secura.
who you probably haven't heard of, even if you're a pretty big fan of the series. to get you up to speed, aayla secura was a jedi knight and a general during the clone wars era in the prequel trilogy, which is all suitably ******* badass, but if i remember right she has roughly five minutes of screen time in the movies and even less in lines. and you probably remember her as that one blue chick.

and if i remember right she was also one of about three or four female options for the pictures. sure, there was padme amidala and princess leia, who are badass ladies in their own rights, but see the thing is that no six year old watches starwars and thinks to themselves, "hmm, i want to be a politician!" you think to yourself, "i want to be a jedi." and the only option that was a girl and a jedi was a background character.

but that's the thing isn't it? being a background character, a love interest, a side-kick is something girls grow used to seeing themselves cast as. sure, we're in the movie, but with half the lines and screen time. never the center of the story. never the hero, just the pretty girl with fluttery eyelashes he saves. too often i found myself having to invent my own characters and stories so that i could feel that i was part of a narrative, too.

and suddenly, more than ten years too late for for six year old me but just in time for a whole new generation of little girls, the person in the center of the poster clutching a blue lightsaber like a beacon of the light side was a girl.

so this halloween as i'm handing out candy i will see myself in every little girl with her hair twisted into three buns and light saber in her hand and the galaxy in her eyes. finally, finally the story is about her.

she was lonely in crowded rooms

you were a mistake worth making

there is nothing more american than superman.
i know this, not born but raised in kansas.
at the movies, when the man of steel tells
the government agent that “ma’am he’s from kansas,”
the entire theatre starts applauding.
he is the only illegal alien people from kansas will ever clap for.
when i was little, my father used to tried convince me
that he was alien, just not an illegal one,
because, well, it was technically true.
he’s just like superman, really, a boy living in a world
that’s not quite his that he loves anyways.
white kids in my classes never laugh at that story
but i still think it’s pretty funny. white kids in my classes never
like a lot of things i keep talking about, writing about.
because they’re always talkin’ about bootstraps
like everyone is born with the same pair of shoes
and i can never stand that.
because america is not a dream, it’s a meritocracy.
i mean, superman, that’s why we love you, right?
you’re the best and we only like things that are different
when they are cutting edge, bodies sharp
but not knife blades, nothing too lethal.
the reason we should allow immigrants in the country is
because of how they stimulate the economy,
the reason we should fund public education
is to keep kids “off the streets,”
the reason we should stop burning our planet alive
is because we have nowhere else to go,
the reason we should care about another person is always
bound to how they affect us. and i’m tired of penning arguments,
aiming to teach people how grow empathy a few years too late.
stop talking about my people like they’re dollar signs,
like we’re only worth our output. you like us when we’re superman,
sob stories to success stories, model minorities.
but you hate us when we take up too much space.
you hate us when we’re too angry or too loud or too comfortable.
you like us grateful, don’t want us to ever ask for more.
can all our american dreams live at the same time?
or are they pack of cannibals, eating each other out of existence?
does a dead boy in kansas mean the same to you
as a dead boy in syria? do you cry for him in the same way,
is his body just as heavy in his mother’s arms?  
riddle me this, if a body falls hard against the concrete
and his murderers walk around as if they are not murderers
then does it make a sound?
how much is it worth?
how much is it worth?

like everything else,
you never see the collision
until you’re already crashing;
all the coins in your cup holders raining down
to be suspended like copper stars,
our hair floating around us like we’re underwater;
we are drowning in mid-air, we are just a car upside down,
headlong towards the water
rushing to a date with destiny we had wanted to cancel.
we are just an airplane shot out of the sunset,
blazing down like a comet.
and if you have only seconds left,  
have you lived a life you’re proud of?
would you change your regrets?
who are you thinking of as it all goes dark?  
who would you call to tell that you love them
two minutes from the carcass of a plane crash?
why don’t you call them now?
but see the thing is, most people don’t start living
until they’re afraid of dying.
we are creatures of comfort and comfort is in habit,
and until the car crashes
until the plane falls from the sky
until the bank is held up
until death’s staring us down,
just trying to see who blinks first,
most of us aren’t going change anything.  
we all know that the sun is going to expand
and swallow us whole,
but we won’t care until it’s singeing our eyebrows.
we like to talk about death
as if it’s not inevitable,
and we like to ignore the last page
until we’re on it.    
we are all the in between, we are all in transit,
we’re all nomads and lonely hearts and wanderers.
we’re all bandits, we’re all thieves in the night
illuminated by our emergency flashlights.
we’re all stars destined to be either
black holes or supernovas, imploding or exploding.
so maybe we’re all destined for destruction,
but i don’t care, it doesn’t matter.
not to me
because it’s all about the drive not the destination,
it’s all about the story not the ending.
and i don’t know if i believe in any god,
if i think he’d be the clockmaker or the caretaker,
and i don’t know if destiny damns us
or if we ***** our own selves over.
perhaps life, perhaps the end is predetermined
and we’re all stuck in our circuits,
we’re all mice in our own mazes.
but there’s something to be said for the middle, isn’t there?
the story doesn’t stop meaning anything
just because you know the ending.
and perhaps each of us is the director of our own existence,
and perhaps we are the chorus member of somebody else’s
and perhaps we’re just caught up in the details of it all.
what i’m trying say is,
we’re all a little ******* up
and we’re all a little messier than we let on
and we’re all just trying to figure it out.
because i have at least two existential crises a weekend,
i’m just trying to beat the world to the punch
i’m just trying to unravel the universe
before it unravels me.
i’m trying to unravel the universe with
my tongue like a cherry stem.
the hand we are dealt is not a choice
but the way we play it is
and i don’t know much about fate
but if you’d tell me, i’d being willing to listen.
i think too much about the past,  
and i can’t tell you about the future,
but on the off chance the fault is in ourselves
and not our stars, i just want you to know i love you.
if i don’t say it i’ll have no one
to blame but myself.

the first time i went to a real concert
i thought my heart was so full it was going
explode all over the speakers.
it was a ******* patronus moment,
you know the kind of **** that’s gonna drive away
all my demons like thieves in the night on buses out of town
when i think about them now.
and you know how hard it is to find somewhere
where the people don't make fun of you
for singing the wrong words?
because listening to the same music is sort of like
instant camaraderie, all of us singing off-key
to the same beat,
even the jaded twenty somethings
who complain about how all the music theses days
just has less words and more synth.
we’re all hearts without ribcages tonight,
and i didn’t care what they said because
i swear i didn’t even feel the broken bottles
under my shoes when i was walking home after that show,
i was so far on cloud nine.
it was like the best kind of high
only i was sober as **** and i didn't need to
take anything i was offered
because it felt like i already had it all.
and i knew what to do with my pain now:
take it and dress it up in it’s friday night best,
make it into something everyone will know the words to
and suddenly it’s a lot harder to hurt you
when it’s not still rattling around in your chest
like parasites disguised as butterflies.
and maybe i’m not punk rock
enough to rock a mohawk,
because to be honest the only band
i’ve ever been in is the marching band,
but i still got **** to say even if it doesn’t have a chorus
and my pen’s bleeding ink all over my kitchen sink,
because i’m not afraid of myself anymore
and i’m not afraid of being alone anymore.
and i never had a punk rock john
or any type of pete wentz guru in my life
patching up my knuckles,
just the music
and it was enough.
so i think i’d rather watch people cough up
their hearts onstage
and come home smelling like *** i didn’t smoke,
X’s still on my hands,
than cough up mine in the bathroom,
in my bedroom, all alone like i used to.
just because i’m not afraid of being alone anymore
doesn’t mean i really want to be
and kids like me we want immortality so bad,
why else would we write?
why else would we go to concerts,
spend all our money on experiences?
so maybe that’s why
i’m spending all my money on concerts tickets
because i know we either grow up to be rockstars
or parents sending our kids to their shows.
there isn't much in between.
and i want to scream myself hoarse
before i run out of breath.
because tonight we’re all just kids at a concert,
pressed in on all sides and dancing even though
no one has enough room.
we’re all just singing about the same things tonight.
because life is a lot like crowd-diving,
it’s scary and i’m not sure i’m cool enough for it
and you can’t be sure anybody’s going to catch you.
because when you’re fifteen,
i think everybody thinks about
getting the hell out of their veins at one time or another.
when you’re fifteen,
i think everybody thinks about
disappearing at one time of another.
and i think inside we’re all kind of still fifteen sometimes,
whether we’re twenty-one or forty-five.
no matter who you are, sometimes you wake up
and you’d give anything to be somebody else.
and sometimes we’re all kids about to get trampled in the mosh pit,
but you know the rules:
when you fall down
somebody’s gonna pick you back up
if you don’t get back on your feet yourself,
i promise.

when i was a sophomore in highschool
it seemed like half of my class gave themselves stick and pokes,
homemade DIY tattoos out of india ink and mom’s sewing needles
etched dot by dot into their skin.
we were sixteen;
we all wanted to be something permanent.
but even the ink fades eventually
and all that’s left is discolored skin and scars.
everything fades eventually.
even we all decompose eventually,
but i’ve been trying not too hard to think in terms of a legacy
because words like that are so heavy.
i don’t want to work so hard to have something to leave behind
that i have nothing while i’m here.
everyday the number of our hours fluctuates
with every little decision we make,
everyday the length of our legacy is determined
by what we’re leaving behind in our wake.
i'm afraid i've been taught to plan for the future so thoroughly
that it has stolen my lust for the now.
i could tell you my five year plan
but i’m not sure if i could tell you why i want to get up out of bed tomorrow
or what makes me excited to be alive.
in planning i’m always looking down at my hands,
always looking ahead of me but never right in front of me.
i’ve been trying to build a monument
but i forgot to make it mean anything.
so wash me away like footprints in the beach,
i was never really here unless i was with you anyways.
i have an ink-stained love letter and camera roll full of memories
as a testament to what was, or better yet to what wasn’t.
and everybody told me not count hours, but you know i never listened.
none of us ever listened, cautionary tales like warning signs
and we ignored them all.
we were all sixteen, getting chipped down and broken up
for the first time and we all wanted to be whole again.
you can put back together fragments,
but you’ll still see where the cracks were.
you take your broken bones and you learn to splint them
until they heal up,
until you only remember when it’s raining and you’re aching
for something you thought you buried.
we just a bunch of fistfight kids getting out of love
with ****** knuckles and smirks like “you should see the other guy”
we were all each other’s punching bags
and i think we all liked bruises
because we thought if we pressed them than they’d scar,
then at least something would stay permanent.
but it was 4 AM, all the hours flew away and all my tattoos were stick on.
you were always right and i was always wrong.
so let’s pretend that all this empty street in front of us is really ours
and let’s get pulled over for noise disturbances
like we were always laughing too loud, scared shitless
and staring at each other’s faces
in the red and blue lights until everything looks purple.
let’s stay out until the sun starts to rise like we’ve got nowhere to be,
fumbling around with bottle openers and each other’s hearts.
let’s do things not just to collect experiences,
let’s do things not just to say we did.
let’s do things that will only be immortalized by stories
because i think that’s why we tell stories, or at least i know that’s why i do:
the need to be remembered staves off the fear of being forgotten.
and i am no exception,
i don’t care about the slowly expanding sun, i just… want to be someone.
you see it’s just that a lot people want to go out with bang,
but i ain’t trying to go out at all.
because i used to be terrified of being forgotten,
i used to be terrified of leaving this world without so much as a foot print.
i remember i wanted to be quoted,
i wanted my words to live forever even if i had no pulse.
i wanted to know about immortality.
and i’m not all talk, i’m all writer’s block;
unable the eloquently string myself together like poetry.
because i’ve learned words don’t make you permanent,
they just make you a little harder to wash away.
and photographs don’t keep things from fading,
they just make it hurt more to remember them.
i’ve learned words just prolong death, they don’t dispel it.
so let’s do this.
it’s the closest i’ll ever get to the fountain of youth,
to undeniable truth, to lasting.  
let’s do this, let’s tell stories, let’s talk tongued tied with poetry.
again and again, every night.
let’s get on stage and root around in our chest cavities,
try to find where we misplaced our hearts for a start
and then try to find all the truths hidden inside ourselves
we always swore were there.
because this is the only time i feel like the world can’t knock me down,
because this is the only time that i wouldn’t even care if it did.
because i always want to feel like this.
i want to feel like i matter for one fleeting, fleeting moment.  
because if i could capture this moment in my hands like a firefly
then it would still die.
it would still die even if you had to pry it out of my cold dead fingers.
so something is not good because it lasts.
something is good because it matters while it did.

the marble stairs leading up the leaning tower of pisa
are worn down like lips beginning to frown.
this is result of 500 years of walking.

i know a lot of people who shrink into themselves,
arms crossed and shoulders hunched,
as if they are apologizing for taking up so much space.
this is the result of 15 years of walking all over somebody.

this is erosion.
this is the result of thinking that
if you wear someone down then they’ll fit better,
that you’ll find something different underneath what you’ve chipped away.
this is the result of thinking that you can change someone
or that they can change you.

and i know the dangers of thinking
you can find yourself inside of someone else.
it’s easy to lose yourself in other people.
and i had this terrible habit of being who ever you wanted me to be.

you only liked me quiet.
you only liked me when i was easy to hold.
you make me feel how the lovers in the movies do.
you make me feel the way it's silent in the theatre while the credits roll through.
you make me feel miles away even when i’m next to you.

and one day, i caught myself nodding along to opinions
i didn’t even agree with just on autopilot
and i was thinking to myself, my god, is this who you think i am?

i hate the way my name stains your mouth.
i hate the way you make me want to talk softer and softer
until i’m not even saying anything.
i hate the way you make me feel like i have to pretend.

i spent so long trying to be someone you could love
and i am so ******* tired of loving people who make me
feel ashamed of myself.

i am a ten page poem with no stanzas.
and if you don’t get me, then good,
i am not meant to be quantified and understood.
everything i am is right here on my sleeve
and i will not reinvent myself for someone who flinched
at how loud my impatient heartbeat
sounded in a quiet room.
i’ve spent too long thinking that people didn’t love me
because i didn’t make it easy enough,
didn’t sand myself down to fit into the edges of their lives.
i’ve spent too long feeling like i was intimidating, too difficult.
i have spent too long trying to make
myself smaller and smaller until i started to
disappear.

i don’t know how i ever gave you the power to make or break me
but i’m taking it back.
because i don’t want to give away myself,
i don’t want to be just a reflection of somebody else.
and i’ll admit, i do not want to be as complicated as i am.
i do not want to turn my wool black.
i do not want be fractured into boxes.
but i am bigger than your shadow and i am better than these bones.
maybe i am difficult and maybe i don’t care.  

because, baby, when you make me in your image
don’t you dare flinch away from
the reflection.

I went to bed last night crying my eyes out. I kept telling my mother that this meant that people were going to die. This was the first election I got to vote in and I was so fearful that would be the last if this is what the outcome was.

My dad has lived in the USA since 1984, when he came here for college. He speaks English with a thick accent but still more thoughtfully than many native speakers I know. He pays his taxes. He lives here legally. He may not be a citizen, but this is his country too. This is his home. And now I am afraid. I am afraid of what will happen in the coming months, now that the hatred of immigrants has been more than justified. I am afraid that he’ll face outright violence for being passionate and opinionated and unapologetically himself.

Yesterday, I was nervous, yes, and I didn’t expect a landslide. I expected the margin that was much of close for comfort but I still expected Hillary to win. We all did. The truth of it is, we all underestimated how utterly racist and sexist the country we live in is. A candidate in America ran on a platform steeped in racism and sexism, and we elected him over the most qualified woman to ever run. As CNN’s Danielle Moodie-Mills said: “This is white supremacy’s last stand.”

I recognize my privilege as someone who's Latino yet still very much white passing, but now I have to wake up everyday in a country who hates people like me because our culture is different, because we're not "from here", because we represent the other. I am the daughter of a Latino immigrant and to know that much of this country so afraid of us and so hateful for towards us, towards people like me and with families like mine, that this could happen is so unbelievably painful.

The fact that we could ever elect someone accused of ****** assault by dozens of women, someone who’s running-mate advocates conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth and overturn of Roe V Wade in 2016, someone who is so woefully unqualified and unfit because our nation couldn’t stand the idea of female president is unbelievably painful.

I’ve spent the six months working with local Democratic campaigns to reverse the absolutely irresponsible and disastrous direction that my home state of Kansas has been sprinting in for the last few years and now it feels like the whole country is following us on our way down. I’ve mades thousands and thousands of phone calls, knocked on doors every corner of my district, and spoken to countless numbers of other people who are fed up as I am. I woke yesterday at 4:15AM so I could be getting out the vote by 5 AM and I stayed up until they called the results last night and then a few hours after that unable to sleep.

There’s no way around how much it ***** when you get involved, when you canvass and you speak out, when you attempt to educate people, when you go out and vote, when you fight the good fight and you still lose to a faction of fearful people overwhelmed by hate.

It feels like my future and our country’s future has been stolen away by an older generation who will not even be there to see it, who are blinded by hatred and misogyny and racism.

In the last few weeks, I’ve sent off a number of college applications. In my essay I wrote about perhaps the most topical issue of this election and one that will always feel deeply personal to me: immigration and racism that bolsters those who are so staunchly against it, those who want to build a wall or start a registry for Muslims or bar Syrian refugees because they are so afraid of the changing face of America not being the same complexion as them. In my essay I wrote this:

“And yet as the Republican presidential nominee stands on a platform that is so staunchly anti-immigration and, frankly, racist that it might feel more at home in 1916 than 2016, I have hope. President Obama’s family tree, his American born mother and foreign born father, resembles mine in a way that no one’s before him has. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton bursts onto the Broadway stage, reminding us that America was, in its very best version of itself, born as country where even “orphan immigrants” could rise up and make a difference. An Olympic team comprised of refugees gets a standing ovation in the Opening Ceremonies in Rio. I am reminded of why my family, year after year, continues to run our booth. We don’t do it because it’s fun. We do it because we’re proud of where we’re from, we do it because we don’t ever want to forget that. We share our cultural in a fierce refusal to leave it behind. And that's important. Now more than ever.”

Yes, I feel completely disheartened by this election. As a woman and a Latina and queer kid, I feel completely failed by the American promise today. I feel failed by a political system where a candidate can win a large number of the vote but not the White House. I feel failed by the fact a major party in our country let racism and xenophobia swell in its base for years then had the audacity to act surprised when a man endorsed by the KKK became their nominee and president-elect. I feel like we’ve failed everyone I know who cannot vote and terrified over what this victory will means for them and those they love.

So yes, today is undeniably a dark day in our history. On the surface, my father is the one in my family who has the most to fear, but right now he is the most optimistic person in our house. So I cannot abide by being hopeless. And I know this is just another post, article, tweet, opinion, essay right now among a thousands of others. A drop in the bucket. But I remain committed to the belief that writing is powerful and important.

I know that it feels so incredibly hopeless right now, but it’ll only be more so if we let ourselves become apathetic. Stay committed to change and love and inclusiveness. Be loud, be angry, and fight a Trump presidency tooth and nail. Please, please do not become complacent. We cannot afford it.

i’m back home for the weekend
and you’re in my basement like always
because, you and me, we’re creatures of habit
before anything else and my feet are thrown over the armrest,
spilling into your lap, and the episode that’s on
is one we’ve already seen
and i keep thinking about how it’s such ******* that we lived
fifteen collective years without knowing each other,
all this wasted time,
and i want to turn to you
and say, “man, i don’t know who’s ever going to love me
like you do,”
but i don’t because that would be too much,
that would be too much, and i don’t want things for us
to be too much.
god, it’d be so easy, though.
so ******* easy.
we have a scary big threshold for what’s “too much” for us
which makes me want things that i know i shouldn’t sometimes.
instead, i run my fingers through your hair
and start asking questions.
stupid **** about your day and your life when i’m not there.
i just like hearing you talk, i like hearing you talk.
i like the way you laugh at my jokes, even the ****** ones.
you always laughed more with me than you ever did with her,
i never understood why you only saw that in retrospect.
man, i imagine us dancing, reeling, singing like,
look at me, oh look at me,
is this the way i’ll always be? oh no, oh no!
and you’d say something like, “well, i like the way you are,”
because of course you would
and i’d do something dumb like tell you that
you’re the only person i ever really end up missing
and how it’s ******* hard to not love someone
when you know someone like i know you.
i’m not sure you’d want to hear that.
we always joke we know each other too well.
the shape of your hands,
the press of your mouth, sloppy and drunk and 3 AM,
the way you laugh and tell me i’m your favorite person.
i like the way you never make me feel lonely.
i like the way you make the unlovable **** about me feel quiet.
is that love?
you make my insides feel like the fourth of july, is that love?
****. you make me feel something, is that love?
but what do i know about love, anyways?
i've never even kissed anyone
sober.

1.  i get nervous sometimes,
i get a little too nervous sometimes,
and i don’t know how to explain that sometimes
my anxiety is like the third person in bed with me,
tugging on my sleeves, stepping on my heels;
i can’t outrun it.
i wish you didn’t know me while i was anxious,
it makes the way you look at me, the way i feel next to you,
different. i don’t like that.

2. i didn't think we were going to be friends.
it was like 0 to 100, you know?
i used to never talk to you
because i hated the way your eyes would wander off
and next thing i knew
you were leaning in next to me, whispering
your thoughts over the movie
and talking until 4 AM.
everything else is sorted into before and after.

3. after,
i knew we were still going to be okay
because you talked in that voice you only use
when you're uncomfortable with talking
about serious things -- you know
the one where your voice goes high and reedy
like it's trying to climb right out your throat --
and made me promise to text you
if i needed something.

4. i like when we argue our other friends
about what is and isn't white people *******.
i've always been a little ethnic dot in a sea of white faces
and it could be so ******* lonely
and i like having an ally around.
i like having you around.

5. you’re the first person i’ve ever kissed completely sober.

as i tried not to yell at you
because i get paid about $8.25 an hour not to,
i thought about what i might say to you if i was off the clock.

first, i’d like to assume that if i met you in person,
you’d be the kind of racist who has a confederate flag
on the back his pick-up truck
and reposts ******* of facebook
with stars and stripes and “build the wall” in comic ******* sans.
but, then again, you might be the kind of racist who will smile
with your shark teeth and shake my father’s hand.
tell us we’re not like those latinos
like it’s supposed to be a compliment,
like being the model minority gives us some sort of ******* priority,
some of protection in a country that’s turning on people just like us.
i will assume you’ve never been homeless,
never been unsure where the **** home is.
i will assume that you wouldn’t bat an eyelash if we uprooted you
and sent you back to whatever european country
your ancestors hailed from.
after all, this country isn’t for immigrants, is it?
i’ll assume never worried about feeding your children
or keeping them safe everytime they stepped outside,
never been in a country trying to burn itself alive,
never been somewhere the only options were drowning
or jumping ship.
if you had, i don’t think you’d hit me with this *******.
and i’m so ******* tired of trying to find a better metaphor
to make someone understand
that people do not leave home without a reason
and i don’t know what to say to make some ******* donor
understand that people don’t leave their home behind,
houses unboarded and rotting into ****** shores,
unless home is crumbling under their heels.
people don’t leave home unless they’re afraid
that someday soon there will be nothing to come back to.
people don’t leave home unless they’re running
from something much, much more hateful
than you.

TO: icarus
i don’t feel anything when i look at you anymore
TO: icarus
but, sometimes, i miss your freckles like crazy
TO: icarus**
okay so maybe i lied
TO: icarus
i keep trying not to
i keep failing
TO: icarus
but i guess it’s just that
you are like no one i’ve met
TO: icarus
and it’s dumb to call you my first love
when you didn’t even love me back,
but… man, you were my first love
TO: icarus
i love(d) you so bad.
TO: icarus
and if i see you on the sidewalk,
i cross the street because i’m so afraid of brushing by you
and falling all over again
TO: icarus
i don’t think i’d be strong to crawl back out this time
TO: icarus
how dumb i was to think i’d be enough for icarus
TO: icarus
i loved icarus and he dragged me into the sun with him
TO: icarus
i loved icarus and he let me drown in the ocean,
grasping for the feathers of his wings
TO: icarus
you made me want to understand gods,
but i only knew about monsters
TO: icarus
god, you didn’t deserve the immortality
that i gave you
TO: icarus
you didn't deserve a single thing
TO: icarus
so if i’m ever the kind of poet they write biographies about
and whose work high schoolers are forced to analyze,
some underpaid english teacher
is going to have to talk about you
as the mysterious and slightly vilified figure
prevalent in my work
TO: icarus
you're in between every line

TO: romeo
you could’ve loved me but you didn’t and that kind of ******
TO: romeo
i wish we could go back to when we were still possible
TO: romeo
i’d rather be just friends with you than nothing
TO: romeo
see, we only worked when the gravity wasn’t on
TO: romeo
see, i could only love you from 5000 miles away
and we’ll always have the last city we trampled through
TO: romeo
see, i loved you, on other continents and always at the wrong time
TO: romeo
see, i’m not sure i loved you because now looking at you is like disconnect
and maybe i just wanted you because i felt so small,
without a hand to hold under
the heavy weight of history crushing in around us
TO: romeo
see, you make me feel like i’m eleven again,
listening to “you belong with me” by taylor swift and wondering
is that what love’s really like?
not realizing that the girl in the video was wondering the same thing
TO: romeo
so “if you’re wondering if i want you to;
i want you to, i want you to, i want you, dude, i always do.”
TO: romeo
i can’t listen to weezer without thinking of you
TO: romeo
i have this bad habit of tangling up the things i love with people i’m trying to,
i have this bad habit of ruining them that way
TO: romeo
i want custody of our song back  
i want you out of the baseline, hiding underneath the notes

TO: athens
you are a boy born to argue,
confrontation stuck between your gritted grin.
TO: athens
see, a long time ago, before i met you,
i spent far too much of my time apologizing,
minimizing, shrinking my words down until they were fine print.
i was born shy, tongue-tied,
but around you, i am out spoken.
eloquent, concise, not backing down.
TO: athens
and see maybe that’s a bad thing,
two head strong orators always talking over each other.
TO: athens
but i always like who i am with you
TO: athens
an argument
for the sake of argument,
for the sake of laughing over each other’s rebuttals,
for the sake of starting conversation,
for the sake of digging around in your heart
TO: athens
i have never disagreed with someone so much
and still liked them this much at the end of the conversation
TO: athens
i want to argue with you for the rest of my life
TO: athens
when i am tipsy and loud and laughing and leaning too close
to you on the couch,
and drunk enough to see the stars in your eyes
through any of the light pollution,
i imagine if i kissed you it would taste like franzia.
TO: athens
you are easy but i always try too hard
TO: athens
no, baby, you are impossible
and i know i’m ****** and difficult, but you and me?
that’s easy. ****, that’s easy.
TO: athens
i used to think of love as frantic, thrumming,
and then i met you and realizes it could sneak up on you,
quiet and comfortable and unnoticed
until it’s everywhere
and you don’t know how to scrub out the stains
TO: athens
you make me smile, simple as that
TO: athens
and to catch your eye across the room,
the laughter still stuck in my throat, maybe that’s what
i’ve been searching through other people for.

1.  apply for that job, to that university, to that internship. call back the friend you haven’t talked to in a while, call back the boy who left that voicemail you can’t delete, call the person you never said a real goodbye to. do it now, do it today. stop putting it off. stop waiting because you keep saying you’ll do it the next day, the next week, the next year like any of these are guaranteed and suddenly you’ve put your life on hold for a later date. stop living for days you might not have. if you want to do it before you die, if you’ll always regret not doing it, then stop putting it off.

2. do not say i love you just because someone else does.

3. don’t let the fear of saying something you’ll regret ever keep you from speaking. you have so much to say.

4. an open letters to all young writers, poets, teenagers and twenty-somethings with inked-stained fingers: you say your writing’s ****. and i’m not gonna lie to you, sometimes it probably is. but sometimes everybody’s best words and ideas still kind of ****. whatever’s on the paper right now might be no good but keep writing, because some day it might be something people find worth quoting or sprawling on their wrists in semi-permanence. we all started at the same place. some day people might read your words and find the truth they were looking for.

5. do not listen to anyone who tells you to curb your ambition, tells you to aim for less than exactly what you want. do not listen to anyone who tells you to aim for something a little more achievable. if you allow yourself to settle, to set your sights on something a little less risky than it’s true you will never be disappointed. but you will also never be satisfied. the risk is often worth it, and if it isn’t then get back up and take another one. life doesn’t not happen when you’re sitting still, so do not listen to anyone who tells you that not everyone can be a star. you do not need negativity. you have no use for people who don’t believe in you.

6. make peace with your demons, they are a part of you too.

7. decide you want it so much more than you are afraid of of it. your fear is like cough syrup - tough to swallow. but you need to, you need to. the things you’re scared of are the things you will remember. adventure is rarely found inside of your comfort zone and sometimes if you are terrified that just means that it matters.

8. never make yourself miserable for the sake of someone else’s happiness.

9. there is a time and place to sharpen your tongue; know when it is. sometimes you need to be mean, you just do. sometimes you need to be selfish, sometimes you need to protect yourself, sometimes you need to think about what you want. sometimes you need to put yourself first because if you don’t no one else will.

10. but in general, be kind. it might not get you everywhere you want to be, but you’ll usually find wherever you are you’ll be happier and sleep easier. so, be kind. be gracious. be grateful. remember, some people have to fight every single day for the rights and opportunities you’ve been born with. in the grand scheme of things, we’re pretty ******* lucky.

she got a tattoo stenciled “tabula rasa” and could never see the irony.

we love the sun
and its warmth,
but one day it’ll expand
too far
and **** us all,
blotting out this world
with fiery blaze;
maybe that’s just
human nature,
we love what will
destroy us.

we think my great uncle eddie
was on the assembly line that built the atomic bomb.
my aunt mildred said he could never tell her
exactly where he was or what he was doing,
far away in the desert
back when he had to take trains to visit
back when manhattan was just place in new york,  
he could only tell her that he loved her.
we still don’t know for certain,
there are some stories that are taken to the grave.
but i wonder, i wonder if my aunt ever looked at his hands
and thought of the destruction
that could be so carefully hidden in his palms,
explosions under his fingernails,
the shells of burnt out cities in his fortune teller's lines
when he touched her delicately,
brushed her hair behind her ear.
but she probably didn’t;
most people only question what they want to question.
everyone thinks of what their hands have built.
not everyone stops to think of what their hands may have destroyed
in the process.

sometimes when i am trapped inside my own mind
and feel like i’m drowning in the taste of air,

suddenly i am eight years old years,
bobbing up and down in my wimpy life jacket
my legs unsupported

and there is still a chip on my shoulder
a mile wide.

sometimes i am still the five year old who balled her eyes out
when her parents accidentally forgot and were late
picking her up from preschool,

sometimes i am still sixteen years old and in love with you
sometimes i am a person i never thought i’d manage to grow into,
sometimes i am a person i’ve yet to become.
  
i am juxtaposition of a thousand different versions of myself.
i am equally the eight year old girl still afraid of the water

as i am the almost-adult you so naively believed to be fearless,
my self-assurance a really good halloween costume.

i am a newborn at the same time
as i am frail ninety year old grandmother.

i am brave and i am terrified
and i am naive and i am jaded
and i am clean and i am ruined;

i am a blank slate and i have been scribbled all over,
my skin is smooth and untouched
my skin has laughter lines and stretch marks.

i am the creator and i am the destroyer,
i am everything and

nothing at all.

i am the ocean
and i am the desert.

my lungs are failing as i’m breathing fine,
and i can see the end and the beginning in equal clarity.

sometimes i’m too old for my skin,
weary like i’ve lived a thousand lives already

and sometimes i am four years old with
my knees hugged to my chest.

sometimes we are two and sometimes we are twenty,
sometimes we were nine and sometimes we are ninety.

we are young and dumb and reckless at the same time
as we are old and wise and careful.

sometimes my father is still a gap-toothed five year old
and my mother is still a tired old woman

with shaking hands,
and my brother is still an angry teenager with a bad hair cut.

we are existing simultaneously
and growing up is just getting really good at pretending

that you’ve got your **** all figured out
when you still feel like a lonely middle-schooler
without a date to the mixer,

alone in the middle to gymnasium floor.

but that’s the thing, isn’t it?
when you are cut open, when you are bleeding,
when you have gaping holes in your nervous system

your flesh heals over
it scars, brand new.

we are bleeding and we we are healed,
we are ******* up

and we are doing just fine.

i am trying to get better at correcting people
when they say my name wrong.

i am both good and bad at conflict.
my hands were born into fists and they never quite unclenched.
when my mother tells me to pick which hill i want to die on,
i pick all of them. but sometimes i let people say my name wrong.
it doesn’t feel like they’re talking to me,
it feels like they’re talking to someone else.

sometimes i say my own name wrong, my tongue getting
tangled over a language that belongs to me
but doesn’t always know how to fit into my mouth.
maybe this is what america took from me.

my father didn’t give me all his names.
in america, you only use three names.
the rest is superfluous, they don’t fit in the boxes on forms.
he didn’t want to give my brother more than we could handle.

people always spell my name wrong.
the first time i ever got published they spelled my last name wrong.
my email inbox is riddled with mispellings, extra Ls and Is.

my name is not even very hard to say.
when my parents picked it out, my mother says
they wanted a name that worked in both languages,
portuguese and english.
i don’t think they always understand what they gave me,
the act of being lost in translation
before i even took my first breath.

loving you was kind of like oversleeping.
quiet and so, so loud
when i opened up my eyes.
i spend all my time running late,
shaking the daydreams out of my head.
something about you
reminded me of all times i just wanted to sleep the year away,
wake up next september and have everything be okay,
and how glad i was i stayed awake for july,
a few months past my bedtime.
it’s the line running on repeat in the cracks of my brain,
there’s a symphony in here playing, it’ll never be the same.
looks like the conductor called in sick,
so it’s like some ill-conceived medley
of tchaikovsky and biggie
and if you don’t know now you know
to the backing music to the nutcracker.
every book i’ve read and every movie i’ve ever fell asleep to
are so tangled up that i can’t make out the lines
i actually wrote underneath them.
what i’m trying to say is that it’s all cymbal crashes in here
and i’ve run out of metaphors, i fear  
that i can’t seem to say anything at all right now,
i am writer’s block at 3 o’clock
and the afternoon has no right to feel 2 AM like this.
i used to think loneliness only happened
when it was the middle of night and i was wondering why
i couldn’t seem to take up all the space in a twin bed on my own,
or when i was in the middle of crowd
and i kept catching myself searching for someone who just... isn’t there.
and this poem has been in process
in the back of my head for a long time,
for about as long as i’ve known you.
i keep adding lines and crossing them back out,  
i keep opening my mouth and sewing it back shut.
you see, it’s very… crowded in my head,
often i feel like i’m exceeding capacity.
like a thousand word per minute,
like a thousand poems and i could never finish it,
i guess that’s is why i “write like i’m running out of time”
i guess that’s why when i perform i speak so fast
my words get caught and my tongue gets tangled,
i’m stuck looking for new angles,
i haven’t met a cliche i haven’t mangled --
what i’m trying to say is
that there’s a lot of ******* going on in here
and you make it all go…
quiet.
and don’t get me wrong,
i love myself, in the way you’ve got to love yourself
when you don’t really always like yourself.
but still, i spend a lot time wishing i had a better handle on myself.
wishing i could press pause
just to give me enough time unscramble myself,
wishing that i was less;
less difficult, less rough, less soft, less messy.
because sometimes i feel so ******' chaotic
and you...
you make everything stop for just a second.
you make everything about me feel okay.
and now, i don’t know about god
but i believe in love and i believe in poetry.
now, i’m not much for destiny
but i believe in the way you sometimes look at me.
to put it simply, you make me want to write poems
about weezer and way you smile.
simple stuff. good stuff.
and i like you because you never pretended
that you were too cool to know the words,
our lips moving just the same.
because we are stumbling, tumbling through life
and i want to spend mine with people
who aren’t so ******* scared of admitting that.
because i measure my heartbeat in drumbeats,
in what’s pouring through my headphones,
and the fact that you get that makes me feel so much less alone.
all the chords/cords tangled like our hearts on the floor,
i’m not going to write you love song, baby,
i’m going to write you an anthem.
because you and i, we we're composed to same notes.
and i could find a lot of ways to phrase this --
we’re made of the same stuff, stardust, kindred spirits
or something like that;
because i’m so good at words,
but my words aren’t near good enough to find a way to say
that you are the space between silence and noise,
where my heart goes to rest.