you would always seem the broken one
but god knows how many bodies you’ve fixed
how you hold the sanity of others in your palms
like the collapse of the galaxy depends on it
always so delicate, so gentle, so careful
you are the intake of breath of the almost dying
and *******, you are the north star of many
sharing the light and poetry and hope
and filling lungs to the point of explosion
like supernovas contained inside our skin
your veins overflowing with ink and quills
giving out much but never keeping any
good god i hope you know how much you’re worth
like the only four-leafed clover in a thousand patches
i bet you lost count of the broken hearts
you’ve glued back together, how much ache
you have tucked inside your pockets to keep
you make me write poems in the middle of my sleep
so i guess this is the payback, my little gift
to the girl with eyes who have seen brokenness,
who knows the true meaning of love and hurt,
to her who fought the demons with her words,
whose tempest washed out the worst,
who deserves so much more than this birthday poem,
the girl who inspired me and millions of others,

i’m glad you’re alive
i’m glad you survived

~ d.a

Twelve years old and I knew I was too much.

A body too much- a stomach that stretched and stuck
and a waist left red, dented, stinging after a day in jeans.

A brain too much- a thought process that took flight
without permission and dropped rogue missiles of ideas
in phone calls with great aunts, deep in essays
during state funded tests and leaked from brown paper bags
in middle school lunchrooms, leaving me silent and sticky and
only just fitting in.

Any conversation was secondary to
the fuzzy way I could feel
my mouth tripping hard to keep up with a dizzy brain
and even before a sentence finished
Feeling regret like warm honey coat my throat and
seep down hot and solid to my roaring gut.

I was a heart too much.
Tears ran forceful and free for
so long. There was the heavy,
lonely feeling that grabbed root at my pelvis
and lounged, languid for days- ******* any hope I could muster
out of tan hide until only leather shell remained.

Dawn would find me ushering in chilling spells of misery
triggered by the whole wide world-
a boy with a gun on the news,
a teacher’s tight forehead while mean kids flexed their puberty,
Or finding a picture of my parents before they were my parents,
and wondering if they ever actually knew love.

At twelve years old my soul was stretched out and sagging.
At twelve years old I held tight to being less
At twelve years old I knew only one way dull the aches sprouting
as fast and fresh as ivy inside my bones.

At twelve every birthday candle and eyelash,
every wishbone and 11:11
was devoted to smallness and simplicity
So certain that the less of me there was
the less I would have to bear from the world.

More than half my life I’ve spent in pursuit of sharp
bones to shield and a lithe tread to conceal.
I have itched to be a sole shrinking girl among
the growing and gaining of peers-
to finally find quiet in a body that
was beginning to ripen in a shrill,
panicky way that would just not do.


More than decade I’ve spent with bile on my breath
and scrappy knuckles desperately begging
the arrangement of meat and bone I live in
to contract; to fold back in on itself and strengthen
into a place where I could catch my breath and
learn to tend.

Now, too many seasons and too many
mistakes later- I do wake up in
a smaller body. Twelve year old me is
beaming as she sneaks glances the XSs
stitched in labels and the chorus of likes that
coo and comment how darling I look in dresses.

Twelve year old me is quietly,
solemnly psyched about the bruises that bloom across
my paling curves after a good stretch on ground.
She even nods her head gleefully
to my swaying pulse as it dances to its own, faraway music.

Twelve year old me could care less about the bone-buried knots
entombed along my spine and the putty-snap cracking
bones I show off like party tricks.
She sees the yolky shimmer of eyeballs and trail of hairs I shed
like bread crumbs marking my path and she doesn’t bat an eyelash.
She’s glad she managed it-
and anyway the price is worth the discomfort,
health in youth is mostly over-rated.

But I do wonder what greedy, vicious
twelve year old me would think if she knew
I am still, secretly, too much.

Could she muster any pride as she feels
my heavy, fatigued heart expand to fill the bits
and dark corner secrets I starved away?
Or any pity as she watches empty-word fog crawl
between ribs and bellow out like a pirate’s flag under raised hipbones.
She meets the murky mass that fills my frame- heavy and suspended
like a dark towering cumulous
waiting for the bow to break and the storm to fall.

Maybe she’d find my brain chemistry unnerving.
Seeing desperate fists pawing at ideas as they are born and implode
and holding numbly to loose bits, reeling them in stunted fervor like kite strings.
Thunder cracks and I’m not nearly electric.

So I grip tight;  sinking decalcified teeth
into the catch of the day, rowing a rusty canoe out of the
whirling, mirrored lake of my mind and back to shore.
I will attempt to fit my
hard won ideas into any and all variables.
I will drive myself crazy with inspiration
but never create a **** thing.

The thoughts coursing through my almost-there body are
flexed horses. They gallop around
the same dirt track for days on end and I have bet
what’s left of my youth on photo-finish losses.
I’ve got nothing to show for who I am these days.
Except for the dresses.
I look good in the dresses.