i have baby snails in a terrarium
i often think i am a bad person
but today i got so worried that i would hurt one of them by accident i cried
i think
i might be an okay person

i love you
you cared for me like i truly mattered to you and i hope i really did
i cared for you, the mother i never had
i thought i lost you once but i was lucky because you were not gone well now you are gone you said less than a goodbye and i didn't know you were gone until you were so far away
even though i screamed and sobbed and broke for you nothing was changed and you did not hear me
the only thing i want is you
you
please come back to me

i have been through it all and i have been thrown out of it all
it is so hard to be told that you are okay and you are not suffering
it is even harder to be told this a lot by the people who are supposed to care for you
it is hard to feel like you should be better because you act like you are better but in reality your actions are dissonant
because you think so much about how you are still in the same place you were when people said you were not okay
said that you were dying
said that you were crazy
that you were bad
you were frustrated
but they said that you needed to find control in yourself
how do you find something you never existed in the first place
how do you learn who you are after everyone has failed you and you need to heal on your own now
because regardless of how widely recognized and validated mental illness is they expect it to go away if they do everything right
but you know, i know, it does not disappear so simply
it is not so simple
it is so very hard
i feel broken but i look put together so they say i am fine i do not need anything more
i am angry because i am still very sad and very small and i have not learned how to grow yet
i am a seed in a prosperous garden but i will not grow
and they will see i have not grown and they will ask what is wrong
and i will tell them that i've been this way since i was planted
but no one thought to look deeper than the surface
no one thought to actually listen to the plant themself
so i will remain in dormancy and maybe
just maybe
they will forget about me entirely

Time always ticking
A trip triple tricking
The thinker’s talent telling
Told trust in their wits
A tad foretold in tableaux
Tot tot tin buckets in tams
Take out and talkative
Go tick tick tick tick
Trick the topography
Turn up the top town
To take a tent
Try truly hard
But tend to be tardy
Tagline and cosine
And untwine and the
capital of Lichtenstein?
And whatever else you can find
To taint the trees with
telemarketing
Watch the tardigrades
Trek through lichen and tailwater
Taradiddle my fiddle and
Trick the ticking time

I sit in the bushes, a burglar of imagery and a thief of colour, taking from daisies and TV screens for a paper transfusion,

A plastic cup paddles up to me, a puppy who is happy for freedom from its owner, and is asking for treats, so I give it a place on my page, a personification, and a promise of immortality,

Most of this is green, no matter the domain of life it occupies, green prickles, feathers, dewdrops, spindles, and leaves on branches broken,

Under the scuffed rubber of my shoes is bland, brown right now but so often grey, the grey of the city and the abiotic entities suspended by the things that walked before me, as it carries my name I assume it is me it remembers,

I have stared at the white-lighted sun for too long, but brief glimpses of red under that lady’s heels and hidden under petals still stand out among cool counterparts,

The trees are alive, the flowers and weeds and awful bushes I hide in too, even the rocks carry the life around me an integral part in an ecosystem, which makes me wonder why in my ecosystem I can be useless, and why I am still dying,

The sun feels good but I remember being taught it should feel bad because it illuminates everything, not just the melanocytes under my skin, but the plague that stretches across my hands because I can’t help but stay awake sometimes, so I bury it in my clothes to remain uncomfortable,

It is still amazing to me that moss can grow between pavement cracks under foot soles and under the pressure of the sky a little heavier than the people above it and still have biological diversity,

I have spotted death now, inevitably, black-cobwebbed hollowed out under six-framed sides to form a stomach for things to rot in, a home for the local housefly,

I wonder then, why, around me there are also flies,

Do a U-turn: its canine calamity and sixty degrees, I can see reckless joy manifesting under wild fur and soft paw prints, spreading happy and dancing like a parasite,

The fawning parasite travels, bringing news of the sunlight, through the cracks in the pavement like the blood vessels of the city, it is carried into the grey building from which we came, causing chaotically pent-up kids to diffuse,

That’s why I’m here, isn’t it, because the grey blood vessels lead back to the blood vessels of gray.

you were the colour blue
touched with your cold hands
i was helpless
hopelessly addicted to the sunset skies and the deep ocean fish
that you said you held dear
you loved the colour blue
the forget-me-nots and the summertime beach trips
the slight blue of the night skies with the blue-tinted stars cresting the event horizon
i saw black and white
but you, to you i saw blue
too much blue
all around us was blue
but you made me see the blues of your eyes and the rusted signs in your backyard
not the blue of the gaze behind my back or the dark, dark blue of the water in my lungs you had so skillfully breathed into me
the blue that kept me at arms-length to you
surrounding your hummingbird heart
my chick-a-see heart was drowned, trying to reach you
i loved the colour blue when i was with you
but you put it all on me
and decided it didn’t suit me
so you took it back
and i saw the blue of the bruises on my chest
the blue of the ocean of unrest you gifted me
the blue blinding of my brothers and sisters
the blue of their wary
the blue of my weary
the blue of my hands and my heart, the only blue i had left
i see in black and white
and you couldn’t make me see otherwise

I have tried to speak through metaphor and veiled words and the abstract picture they paint
I try, and try again to paint a coherent picture
but they can't see it
they can't see where I stressed every syllable and deeper meaning of the creases in the paper
the marks on the blank slate
my blank slate
somehow, I feel I can really only speak in metaphor because as soon as I dont
as soon as my paint on the wall becomes scribbles and letters strung together to create a message to create something that I think the world should see, should know,
they shut me down
shut me out
because I have finally found my voice
metaphor is what I use to bend the rules around my words
tricking those who watch into standing far enough away from me they don't see the power and point
Metaphor is what I use to trick the simpleminded and the hateful into seeing what I want them to see and not what I really really mean
Metaphor is what I use to tell the world about the things I cannot say out loud the things I will not say to the ones I used to love who failed me
or maybe I failed them
But what difference does it make who failed who because I will never speak to them and they will never speak to me and this is a happy consensus
But solemn silence turns to bitter words and the screams of the disadvantaged and these will not do
for most, silence was a temporary solution that cannot fix the sense of dread from being looked down on for fighting back
So metaphor is a saving grace
a safety net between you and your intended audience
between you and the world so you have the power to speak freely without fear of repercussions even though the law says repercussion will be avoided
People have taken it upon themselves to bend the law to fit them and not you
to fit their opinions over your facts and their threats over your pleas and cries of help and surrender to them
your words mean nothing
they have to mean nothing because that would mean their authority would be in check and we don't want the white man throwing a fit because he didn't get what he wanted
this prejudice will break us
has broken us
but we're still standing
held up by public image and the necessity for autonomy because we cannot be a broken nation
but let me ask you this
are you willing to stand with a smile stapled to your face and your hands tied behind your back and you feet chained to the ground?
are you willing to stand as a metaphor yourself
as something people will not question because you look like every other perfect person who stood in your place?
are you willing to stand by and watch as they cover and direct prying eyes elsewhere at the slightest hint of a tear in the metaphor
a tear in the demented beauty they have built around you? because we will not be seen as a broken nation
and finally, are you willing to stand alone against the world because you have chosen to support something that cannot, will not support you back?
let me ask you this
would you rather waste your time writing metaphors for someone who might not even understand or accept what you want to tell them?
would you rather spend your life hiding from what you seek to change because what you want to change is influenced by bigots with power and prejudice?
would you rather be discreet than bleeding on the front lines fighting for something you believe in or something you want people to see or something that needs to change?
would you rather be deemed a pointless poet or a powerful influence.
I am a pointless poet using metaphor as a wall to stand behind to avoid the shrapnel.
but I'm tired of being misunderstood.