my heart is the plate untouched and the last kitten picked from the litter. the wilted wildflower and brown bird. you judge my painted feathers and detest my naked petals. leave me to find solace in the ditch when you spit me from your window as you drive.

i guess my whole life runs on these feedback loops, constantly dependent on the words i receive from you. everything good you've ever said to me rings softly in my head like my grandmother's wind chimes. your insults are alarms beside my bed.

i wish i was deaf. deaf to your loves and dislikes, the way your eyes look before i change myself to fit your type. maybe this one i'll get right. another half second and we're there, i am everything you want me to be; nothing more and nothing deep, the words that spill from my teeth fall right off me. i claim my memory has always been this bad and it's not a lie, but the truth is i can't remember what's real because i'm lying all the time.

but you know this already, you see me, you recognize the flaws in other people so clearly that even the reflection of personified perfection gave you displeasure.

i'm sorry i made myself into someone you dislike.
i don't know how to unmake myself.

i asked you to share yourself and
you told me there wasn't
time
or trust
and i said if we don't make it,
there never will be

i am going to student counseling and so far it is a dream! by that i mean i haven't signed up yet.

it’s always national something day. national pancake day.
national sourdough bread day. national tweed day.
national jelly bean day. national talk like shakespeare day.
there are bakers with flour hands and runny batter
and elbow patches and rambling professors and assignments due
and the bertie botts every flavor beans that make you think of
hogwarts and sonnets. there’s always a tomorrow dragging
itself up over the eyes of last night.

today is national reconciliation day.
the planet has eleven years before it starts biting back
and your heart feels like a timer. you should see
hawaii before it sinks into the ocean. you should see the polar
icecaps before they melt. you should climb to the bottom of
the grand canyon and look up at the sky if you still see it
and celebrate national canyon day if we have one on the calendar.
you should accept that life is beautiful because it’s ugly.
you should call your mother more. you should tell her that
there is a word for “soul” in every language. tell her alma.
tell her you were buried under snow for so long that you forget
that your father, born of rainforest, still takes it for magic.
tell her that life’s not fair and you still want one anyways.
tell her that people always ask you how could you write
about love at time like this and you always
answer how can you not?

if you hold his hand and he doesn't love you,

i mean,
if you hold your own hand
in his
             if you love him and he doesn't love you
are you holding your heart together? is this
hard for you
yet

      i said never hold the hand of the boy who
cares
in all the wrong ways

i said these things
i said

be loved

I am alive by luck at this point.
I wonder if the gun that will eventually take me has been made.
Whose trigger will bury me.
How many bullets, like a flock of sparrows, will come carry my life to its final bed.
Today, I am alive but there is no law to thank.
If not me, then someone else.
Born into a game of chance we never asked for. Traded diplomas for obituaries. Traded graduation speeches for eulogies. Traded futures for an early grave. Forced to cash in their chips. We don’t want to play anymore.
And this too is eulogy. And this too is prayer. And this too can resurrect the coffin wood back to a tree. Can sing back alive whatever parts of you died with them. Whatever leapt in your throat at yet another headline.
Mourning until you, too, are a thing to mourn.
But we will no longer be martyrs.
We are the rude awakening to politicians who pawned out our safety, who bartered our lives for bribes.
You say “gun reform is not the answer” but all I can see is a bullet rattling like a pinball in an innocent student’s jaw.
You smell like gun smoke and
I can see the AR15 you're holding behind your back and
I guess it's easy to crack jokes about dodging bullets when you're the one firing them.
Give teachers books not bullets:
Kafka isn’t kevlar.
Bronte isn’t bulletproof.
And how sick is it that we must add school shootings to your list of proud american traditions.
Throwing opinions like punches.
How many more have to die before you decide your ego isn’t as important as you think it is?
And I, too, am buried alive
My soggy grave parting its greedy lips.
To you, my bones, when ground into gunpowder and mixed into water, taste like champagne.
My pulse, as thin as an obituary panting beneath sweaty palms, and sure
We are “just kids,”
But you are forgetting we are the next generation
And you autopsy your fists.
Call it reclamatory.
Lately, when asked “how are you?” I respond with a name no longer living.
And who knows if mine will be next

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.