My hair curls
in odd ways
with a cowlick
in the back
it's floofy on one side
straw colored
and throw the fact
that I have a weird widows peak
onto the stack
I just wish my ****** mop
would be cool
and laid back
because the rest of me
ain't so
bad

I know everyone writes,
"you make me happy"
in their
Valentine's day cards
but if I were to
make you one
it'd say,
"you taught me peace"
Because sadness is inevitable
some days but
peace is what told me
that crying on your cold,
wooden bedroom floor
at six in the morning
didn't mean I'd
never stand again

I am what I am. I am a hormonal ***** who doesn’t really understand why ***** describes girls.
I am drained and have been on autopilot for nine years.
I keep on forgetting I am sixteen, and that makes it ten. I am the Buddhist of a Christian family. Hidden meditation before forced services and watching my grandfather on a stage for three days a week. I’m still trying to get by. I am what I am.
The sweetest and most sour liquid that has ever
met my lips is *****.
I feel pathetic for writing that. I am what I am.
A ****-wrecked liver at age sixteen. I am what I am.
A role model for five children younger than seven, and then there’s me,
drinking Grey Goose from the bottle.
It’s going to make my throat warm and my swarming soul pain teeter-totter to a rest.
The best past time I have found is trying to fix myself.
I am what I am. That’s not good enough.

My grandmother says that because I am depressed there are demons living in the rooms
of my chest.
I want to tell her that if she would peer into my stained-glass window eyes
she would see that no one lives in me; not the devil, or demons, or God.

I just pray that she doesn’t open the basement doors and find a swimming pool of the
clear stuff.
I am sixteen. I have to keep writing this or I feel like it’s not true and I’m not real.
I am an aspiring alcoholic.
I am what I am, and I need change. Bad.
But the habits are even worse, and I’m stuck with these bruising memories.
A curse from my past. Heroine and Marijuana.
Highs that never lasted long enough for a mother of one.
Bore a daughter, but wanted a son, and I’m stuck not being good enough
for the thousandth time in my life.
Getting mixed between the names Matthew and Miranda when she was on the low side.
Fast forward to high tide; she’s on cloud nine and I’m locked in my room.
I can smell the scent of smoke that she tells me is perfume, and I’m wondering
if I should be married to a boy, or a girl?

Same year. My first beer handed to me by the father of my first sibling.
“It’ll put some hair on your chest.” he says. I am what I am.
“Girls are not supposed to have hairy chests.” I say.
My mom sends me to my room. I feel so horrid that I don’t eat for days. Two years later
I find out about shaving my legs, find out that razors are sharper than the butter knife
in the kitchen. I still have the word BOY? carved into my thigh.

I go to therapy weekly. My mind is made of Latin words that I don’t know how to translate.
I’m seeing now that how you raise your heart is crucial.
I’m seeing now that not drinking for five months is a triumph.
I am what I am, not what I was brought up to be.

naps turn into days
weeks, years it seems
on a shell strewn beach
trying to escape
off in the distance
an island drifting
over hung with clouds
a terrible feeling that
I must get out
climb the shale
all the way down
freezing waters sting
my doubts
stroke, stroke, stroke
away from the shore
till I drown
and awaken
reborn

my septum ring
is the most consistently
crooked thing in my life