someone I once (loved) kills himself every day
with various darkness and poisons
because he hates the way he was made
-
someone he once (loved) wakes up every day
with various dreams and flowers
because she learned to love the way she was made

I look
     Into your eyes
          Which are like
     Windows
To your soul.
     I wish I knew
          what I meant to you.

Holding yourself in the shower
Waiting for tears to fall
Just
Isn't
The
Same
As having someone clinging to you
Waiting
To catch them when they fall.

Sometimes I wonder
Why?
Why am I so worried people will leave me?
It's because of
Chris
And Tanner
And Hayden

I let them get to me
Under my skin
I trusted them
So I opened up
And it felt good
And right and freeing

But look around me now.
They're not here
They learned all my quirks
And insecurities
What made me happy and sad
Smile and cry
And then they left
With barely a backwards glance

That's why I don't want you to go
Because South Carolina
Will bring you new people
People who are worth leaving me for.

There is nothing below us that has not once been on level ground.
At some point or another, we will be below, and the things on top will just look down and think about
the Underneath,
just as we do;
just as we are.

And maybe the Underneath is not just dirt and grime and lost socks and extra buttons,
but the voices living Under your skin and the words that are sitting in the pit of your stomach right now. Maybe the Underneath is the butterfly that you accidentally stepped on and the tears you shed for it.

Or maybe, the Underneath is the only thing that is holding your surface in place.
Buildings are just cement over metal.
Humans are just flesh over bones; sinew over joints and glue.

But more than that, people are swirling nebulas of ideas, and sticky notes on lunchboxes, and of things that always seem to be just
On the tip of your tongue.
(Underneath it I suppose, if the mouth is to be blamed for a lack of noise.)

So, if skeletons are integral to our construction, and bodies but a tarp over a cage holding being, why are we so hesitant to peel our shells back and reveal our
Underneaths?

Under my bed, I have letters that I have written to you, bundled in twine and tape,
and I leave them under my bed so that the monsters there may have something new to read.
Who needs a magazine when you have blue ink from veins, spilling on page after page of i-love-yous,
spelling out promises and bribes and the worst bits of myself and of you.

these are the things that sit just

Underneath.

I write poems for kids
That too often get asked

“are you a boy, or a girl”

Because they are the only ones who
Will understand the physical rush
Of empowerment versus discouragement
In their guts

The question that verifies
You have finally broken gender norms
Unhuman.
Floating in unearthly genderless celestial bodies

“are you a boy, or a girl”

Only to hit the ground faster than falling stars
When told

“you better ******* start acting like it”

I write poems for kids
Who have a bird cage for ribs
And fish for a heart
Raised on its ability to fly

Look kid, you gotta learn how to swim away
Because you’ll be question by bird keepers
Until the day your veins are able to run upstream

You’ll leave the closet to only join the zoo
So enjoy the field trips
And the bears, and the otters
And learn to question the birds and the bees
It’s okay to only want birds on birds, bees on bees

It’s okay to want to try ****.
And it’s okay to want to stay as far away as possible
To think about *** at sixteen and keep that sweet composure

One day the reflection on the glass isn’t going to match
The second grade smile behind it

Frame yourself however you may choose
It’s okay to have purple hair
We all make mistakes
Don't feel guilty for being too scared to tell your mother

Your whole life, people have been trying to build you in the wrong direction
They aren’t going to understand what it feels like
To simply just wear
Eyeliner,
I understand, it’s war paint

Or the kind of questions you’ll get all afternoon
“are you a boy, or a girl”

Your identity is not polarized
Gender is a spectrum, not a just *****
There’s shades between the seven colors I fit in

Recognize you’ll be lonely eight days of the week
There’s no one like you at home or at school or work
So step out of frames,
Look at bigger pictures

Every hallway is your catwalk, every shoe
Can be your empire state stiletto
Every ****, ******, slur is compliment to the human anarchy inside your bones

Your human anatomy matched with the way your mind things
Is one of the greatest forms of activism
And if you ever go through an emo phase,
Be the baddest goth child you can be!

I write poems for kids
That fall between “boy and girl”
I write poems that I wish I heard as a kid
To tell kids to keep fighting
Even though the war is not yet won
There’s victory in every battle you tired