Since age 5 I was taught
to wear loose clothing
and not talk about eating.
"No, you can't have that shirt
with the Hershey's logo across the front.
You're already overweight,
let's just slap a label on it."

My mother doesn't know that
every day I still hear her voice
telling me to tilt my head up
in pictures and to go outside already.

I remember age 9 as my dad
telling me I was smart and my mom
telling me I couldn't buy that shirt
because it clung to my stomach.

I was taught to never talk about food
because it would always be met with
"of course".

Mother dearest, I know you meant well
but your coaching lead your little girl
to value the size of her thighs over
what she learned at school today.
You wanted to protect me from
the world, but didn't protect me
from myself.

Teaching is not telling me that
I had no willpower at age 8
and you forced me to accept myself
because nobody else would.

But trust me, mother,
you were never consciously hurtful
so I need to let you know:
the next time there is a little girl
that looks up to you, do not tell her
that she has to watch what she eats
or she will never get respect.
Do not tell her that "It's your body,"
when she asks for just one more brownie.

Just make sure that you love her numerically more
than that number on the scale.

feminist?

to some it rolls off the tongue like the grit from last night's pork

you? a hair-covered, bra-burning, feminist?

no, feminism is not male-bashing, god-hating barbarianism. you are wrong.

feminism is fighting against the veiled warrior that is society's gender roles

walking down the street, a young woman is constantly harassed by cat-calls

behind walls, in stalls, she falls

the red lipstick she wore today

was not supposed to be her blood

your warped limbs
dance under the sway of your breath
your notched fingers
wind around the minerals of your toes
you are light
and your capillary rivers
pulse with nothing grander than life

you are an everlasting cycle of rebirth
your heart is heavy
and although you tremble
benevolence remains in your eaves

mother,
you are taken for granted
but your tidepool eyes
and mossy complexion
are the work of nothing less
than the waves of the cosmos

Wear pink, never blue. You are a princess, not a hero. You are a hero’s shining and docile wife. Little girls will read stories about your appearance, not your achievements. Princesses and wives keep their hair clean and their man fed. Why be the breadwinner when you can bake it instead? Keep the house and the children tidy. Do not play with the toy cars or the small green army men. The small plastic tires will tangle in your hair and the pointy guns will poke at your delicate fingers.

Learn to wash the windows. You’ll be yearning through them for your entire life. Keep them clean to remind yourself of what could have been. Learn to dust the shelves. You will stock them with reminders of what life means to you. Scrub the doorknobs raw, for when you go outside, you must keep clean. Your name will become household if you are any form of *****.

Express and feel emotions, fleeting and open as a blustering curtain. You’re expected to be emotional, so never hold back. When you are shaking with anger, do not be afraid to scream. Holding back is for men. Whatever you do, do passionately. Men are for making ends meet and stoic thinking. Feel the need for these things and only find these needs met in men. Your dreams are to marry ideal qualities, not to have them.

You will fit nicely into a box. You are only a respected female if you meet these standards and requirements. Your hair must be shoulder length or longer. If it is not, you are a lesbian and are handed a bad connotation. Cover all unacceptable skin. If you do not, you are a **** and are most definitely asking for any ****** advances to come your way. Your ribs need to be as visible as your smile. If they are not, you are fat and clearly lazy and unproductive. You will only listen to approved music and think approved thoughts. If you do not, you are a **** and an anarchist and a god-hating liberal. Each of these is a nail in your fragile plywood box. You must be oppressed and not let a hateful word escape your rouged lips.

You must listen to your father and respect your elders. Your mother is not a direct authority figure. She will discipline you by saying that your shirt has always clung to your stomach and your hair is quite oily these days. Your elders know more than you do. When you state a fact or news event, it will be met with either an “I know” or a “that’s not true”.

You will learn to covet appearance above all. Your acceptance speech when graduating college would be null and void if you had forgotten your eyeliner. You have been raised with books about long blonde hair and being rescued. You are not allowed to save yourself. You will wait until a man can sweep you off your feet and that will be the end of it. You must be skinny and made up for that day so that he can pick you up physically and mentally.  

Do not play with the toy cars or the small green army men. The tires will tangle in your long blonde hair and the army men will make you think of power.

you are my new york.

i long to rest within your skyscraper heart
but the stairs are too difficult to climb.

yearning
and distant
and nonetheless unattainable.

an enigma,
a dream,
a space within my concrete chest
flooded with sparkling sewer water.

you are too much,
and i am too little.

you veins pulse with light
but i don't know how much longer
i can pay the electric bill.

i can't get close without changing.

i cannot float down the river
swim through your chest
and end up sitting on the sidewalk.

i try and i look up
but at the top of your skyscraper heart,
i am in a cloud
and i cannot see the ground
nor feel the pulse of headlights and movement.

we are unrealistic.
my arms outstretched
but in vain

i cannot be what you need.

millions live within you,
and i am one.

"i'm proud of you."
the twisting, brilliant tendrils of your words
are tied around my ribs

what hurt was the paralyzing sting
of the bottomless ocean of reality
drenching the bonfires
that had blinded my heart
for years, linked together
by your pouring of gasoline

our love was unromantic
and while we didn't honeymoon in venice
my blood still
pumps through smoking embers

all we have between us are memories
all we will ever have between us is memories
and the weight of my forgetful mind
will not relent in constricting my lungs

your marble column legs
held me upright
and i'll be ******
because this earthquake
lead to my collapse

a note to you:
nobody knows me here.
i am drained.
i am nobody to be proud of.

your fingers have
the perfect crater knuckles,

winding with curves of understanding,
soft ridges aligned.

the gentle embrace of these masterpieces
wrapped around my palm (one inch smaller than yours)

reminds my heart
of your indefinite complexities.

those eyes,
finest mahogany,

textured with your past,
connect our souls, braided.

you are frozen coffee
with an espresso shot.

you are the youthful spring breeze,
cooling my skin to the touch.

thank you for teaching me how to love again;
squeezing me in the dark.

i am truly yours
and you are truly mine.

I long for the slow days

in which the sweat of our problems

drips from our skin

where the water we tread through

washes away our cares

the sun beats down our lingering worries

as we bask in the heat

of the better days

my mother told me
to stop crying.

i wished i could sail away
on the the rivers of sorrow
that stemmed from my foggy eyes,
to get away from here.

but she insisted
that i would find someone
with sunshine in their eyes
to make home
a little less dark.

i remember the first night
that i could feel you in my chest.
there were five of us in the room,
but i could swear
that you only told stories to me.

now, i could feel the white-hot spotlight
on the two of us,
but it was you that turned off the switch.

the first night that i felt close to you,
we were near.
you were drunk
but we counted the lights on the ceiling
and you told me that they were stars.

the second night,
you were drunk
but we watched bob ross
until the clock on the wall gave out,
and when he painted the sunset
with his little feather brush,
i could swear he was painting my ribs.

the third night,
you were drunk
and we crept into your room.
the lava lamp was on,
we tiptoed around your roommate,
and i saw the artificial sunlight
dancing on the wall.
you held me closer
than i ever had been
and your heart beat with mine.

you held me so tightly
that i swear i could feel
you fusing my broken pieces back together
and now i can't stop grasping my chest
to feel it again.

i woke up and you were sober,
and i'll be ******
if you weren't closer to me
than when there was more beer
in your veins than blood,
our foreheads aligned.

you held me in your arms
and still liked me anyway.
you could feel my insecurities
under your ******* fingertips,
and you could still find the light
within my cumulonimbus body.

i thought that you saw the sunset
within my golden hair
that got caught in your sleeve
that first night
and i thought you were open.

here's the thing:
i didn't know your eyes were blue
until the night that i saw them closed
as you were kissing another girl.

i mistook your alcoholic flambé
as a substitute for sunlight
and i'll be ******
because i can't emerge from the smoke.

you taught me
that the sunset is blue,
even if you don't notice until the last minute,
and that once someone's fingers
are intertwined with your ribs,
it takes warmth
to get them out.

i saw the sunlight in your eyes
when nobody else did.

you saw the rays
emanating from my body
when i was sure
that i was nothing but clouds
and wind that makes your skin sting
from the cold.

and all we're left with
(all that i'm left with)
is searching for the cloud break
just one more time.

his family says they'd accept him
it’s scrawled in permanent marker across their smiling faces
what will the neighbors think?
blood is thicker than water, but they’re parched

but the monster under the bed is
those whispering thoughts
he knows they'd all have
engrained into their pre-dispositions
of a cookie-cutter America

the kids at school
the snickers and sharp talk
protected by the armor of his back being turned
up front labeling
"insert your coin and I'll spit out acceptance, only .25"

their drooping faces sewed into smiles
with the thread of a rainbow flag

more and more individuals
are made to waltz
to the familiar song of being trapped

the door to his closet is jammed
he’s bisexual, not bi-species

i love you.
2. that scares me.
3. more than the apocalypse.
4. or student loans.
5. i think you love me too.
6. which scares me even more, because
7. for the first time in my life,
8. we both have the same amount of kindling in our campfire chests.
9. i want to help you clean, because
10. your apartment is a pig sty.
11. but i wouldn't want to do household chores with anybody else,
12. and i know you're trying.
13. we both are.
14. trust me,
15. i know the feeling of cemented lungs,
16. too heavy to lift yourself out of bed,
17. but i sit up.
18. you have strengthened my back.
19. i hope i have strengthened yours.
20. i love your hawaiian dad shirts.
21. i think they're endearing.
22. i want to be next to you, always, and
23. even *** doesn't feel close enough.
24. if you were a haunted house,
25. i'd be the ghost that never leaves.
26. the homeowners would pull out the sage
27. but i love the smell.
28. i'd be a kind ghost.
29. i'd do the dishes.
30. as long as i can remain in your eaves.

my ears ring
and my stomach churns
a holy choir lay before me
and yet I go home
and let the sadness swallow me whole
falling asleep in rivers of salty sorrow
it's been 7 years
of building and molding and technique
I've begun to heave through broken lungs
I'm encouraged every day
only to return to my stained pillow

I'm hearing them more now
at least once a week
our doors and windows
we're sure to lock
the click polices our minds
or at least it's supposed to
no, it couldn't happen to us
crime is as foreign as across the ocean, right?
right?
so one more question
why are the sirens so loud?

we whisper through the living room
as we slink out the front door
the grass is damp with our sorrows
as the stars shine in comfort
the darkness blankets our worries
and I see the flash of your lighter
a cigarette fills your lungs yet clears your head
the yellow streetlamp exposes our faces and minds
"I'm sorry," you murmur as I watch your lips dance
"don't be," I hush
my nightly paranoia is overcome
"you're even beautiful under a streetlight"

hi.

the sunlight behind your ribs
is too bright
for a boy wearing sunglasses.

even though you could drown
in his deep-blue chlorinated eyes,
his heart is not an olympic-sized swimming pool
(like yours).

when it comes down to it,
he will stomp on your garden heart,
and laugh as the petals of your eyes
crumble under his adidas basketball shoe.

you deserve a boy
who will ogle
the marble you are carved from.

you deserve all of the love that you give,
in handbaskets
and hugs
and passing smiles.

stop comparing yourself
to the skinny
straight-toothed
soccer girls
who seem to receive all of the love.

all of the boys have come to be
blonde-haired
blue-eyed
heartbreakers.

i'm sorry that i cannot calm down.
trust me,
i wish that my love
did not feel like lightning to the chest
and i wish i couldn't paint and shingle humans
thread through the water & electricity
and call them home

i promise you that
i beg for the ability to never crane my neck
and stare the darkness in the face

i wish that because i feel so much
i think others are feeling too little
and i wish that every TV wedding
didn't make me weep

and i don't expect you to-
**** that, i expect too much

i wish the notches in my bones
were a little less deep

and that i could forget the white-hot happiness
so that it wouldn't crush my ribs
to say goodbye

my heart is made of concrete

my lungs of porcelain and tile

my heartbeat is a car horn

and my legs are stacked like steel

my mind is a city

full of blinking lights and sounds

I have a man-made personality

I am no tidal wave
I do not crash onto your skin
leaving behind a salty sorrow
I am a puddle of dirt and pond water
my hair smells of the ocean
it rubs off onto me
from the tidal waves I swim through
but I will not rock your boat
I will fill it with leaks
I am no tidal wave

let's take off together
to where the horns and the bustle
blends the screeching of our lives
we'll feel the most whole we've ever felt
being assembled brick by brick
caressing the faces of buildings
the grout sticking to my toes
the body of bodies, never slowing
wearing down what I once was made of
the city has already been brought up
so we're infinitely building ourselves

love is going to bed late
and waking up early.

love is the sun coming up every day
even though we give it a million reasons not to

and love is forgiving.

love is knowing that you have class in the morning
but you want to spend the night here,
near her,
so that she isn't sleeping alone.

love is vertigo in your chest.

love is knowing that it could never happen and loving her anyway.

love is when she tells you that she is straight and you can't stop looking at her mouth

and love is whole.

love is looking up to him,
and love is pride.

love is pride in yourself and other's pride in you.

love is community

and singing in the sun,
feeling the dirt in your sandals,
the guitar chords resonate in your chest.

love is spring with your best friends.

love is bright and ringing and full.

love is the tattoo on your right arm,
painful,
but the stinging will help your fractured memory
remember the love.

love is real when you can feel the absence of it.

love is real when you remember his aching words of pride
and the cave in your chest echoes.

love is real when she tells you that she slept over at his house last night
so that she didn't have to sleep alone.

love is burning,
and true,
and painfully whole.

i miss your growing ribcage
pressed against my back.

i miss drowning in your eyes.

i miss your aching presence
knitted into my bones

and i miss your fingers on my skin.

you were my glass half empty, but i could always make it full.

i miss our slow coffee mornings
when we couldn’t separate
our intertwined fingers.

i miss skipping class just to be with one another.

i miss your platinum tones.

you are pine trees (resilient)
you are headlights (warm)
you are dasies (vibrant)

you are home.

I am a moon
and she is my earth
my dusty craters are filled with darkness
and her gardens bloom in warmth
but when her sun shines no longer
I cast my light
I may be a rocky moon
but her tides flow for me

to my love who’s away:

there are fireworks here.

we can smell sulfur in the air.

my skin is tan now.

the leaves outside my window flutter in the warm maritime air.

do you remember when we would wake up to seagulls?

your eyes looked like the sunrise.

i miss waking up in your arms.

school is the cage to my self-consciousness
I'm sure that everyone in the hallway
is analyzing my personality
I'm sure to **** in my stomach
so much that it makes my back sting
no, I have not lost weight
I've just found new ways to hide it
I'm sure that the hair on my fingers
is as long as the hair on my head
and that my voice is masculine
but not enough to be heard
and as I scrawl this on my math sheet
my hands shake
with the worry that someone will read this
a wind of confidence pulls me down the hallway
but the ship is full of mice
don't tell anyone
but I'm scared as hell

I've studied you like a doorway
so that I know your in's and out's
like how you shake your head when you're mad
and how you show your love in weird ways
like picking up my speech patterns
and how I don't send you things early in the morning when I know you're not awake
because I don't want to wake you
and how you only make that cute screechy noise when you see dogs or boy's faces
and when you bite your nails and fix your hair I know you need a hug
and when you force me to listen to rap music I know it's because you want it to give me the same happiness it gives you
and ****** I think that's the purest form of love

it's 10 pm.
i note the ember of your cigarette emerging among your dark porch
murmurs.
i am walking home
to my dorm with a locked door
"beautiful night tonight, huh?"
my mouth is sewn shut
and my heart is a deep, wooden drum
men are not supposed to howl,
and women are not supposed to sit idly by
at your bared, smiling teeth
i am not walking by for your entertainment.
i want that tattooed on my bones.
i have never walked so quickly
with fear at my heels
i should not have to walk alone at night
with my keys laced between my fingers
because i am afraid of the wolves.

i can't swim.
you supplied me with pool noodles
and innertubes
to where i could kick my legs
but now i'm drowning.

it's been 6 months.
6 ******* months.
and still
every time i see your welcoming embrace
i can feel my lungs fill with salt water
it burns
but i can't stop going back

i am constantly reaching for the unattainable.
i want there to be a time
when the drowning doesn't feel comfortable
but i still have yet to learn
how to hold myself up

i have never felt the weight
of forcibly forgetting the love
to drain the water in my lungs

as i sit behind this flask
i am drowning myself
but at this point
i can't find dry land

lagoon eyes.
beat the drum.

feathertip fingers.
beat the drum.

echoing ribcage.
beat the drum.

dance with me.

i ******* hate moving.
shoving my every belonging into boxes from lowe's,
folding,
rolling,
dust in the air.

there is never enough room.
i have too many pieces of myself and
i live closet to closet.
i try so hard to keep my feet planted,
shove them into the garden outside my window,
feel the dry mulch between my toes,
but the coat hangers attached to my shoulders
do nothing but drag.

now this house,
(this rental apartment)
felt like home.
for the first time in nineteen ******* years,
i had white walls and a window facing the street.
i had carpet that, ten years ago,
my brother and i would have ogled samples of at home depot,
running the plastic threads under our fingertips.
living in the center of town,
i would never be alone.
even if i were to wake up at 4 am, dry mouthed,
heart racing from seeing your eyes again,
the sound of car tires,
knowing that someone else existed within my reality
could make me notice your absence less.
my arms would still be grasping
at the space in my bed where you should be,
but the spot on my ribs that you held
would feel less painful tonight.

i can't stop feeling like you're this apartment,
which, as of tomorrow,
i'll be out of for good.
not in the sense that i'll never see you again,
but in the sense that i got a taste of what i've always wanted.

i'll drive by every day,
notice that the blue paint has faded
by the strength of the everyday sunshine,
but i'll still tear up
at the memory of resting within your eaves,
candles in the windowsills.

at work a few days ago,
my coworker breathed in my ear,
and my stomach dropped to my knees
at the memory of your lazy and quiet sleeping breaths.

i am detached and searching
because within every home i enter,
i scavenge for a chip of blue paint,
a messy carpet square,
a roof shingle,
fractured,
but nonetheless whole.

i search endlessly for pieces of you,
and maybe,
someday,
i could finally unpack.

i used to love the smell of gasoline.
eight years old,
suede seats,
breathing in as my mother filled the tank.

yesterday,
as i took my mother's place
eleven years later,
gasoline smells like *****.

as i inhaled,
insects buzzing akin to the fluorescent lights above,
it reeked of my lack of inhibitions.
my lack of restraint.
my inability to keep myself away from you.
and yet
i would still go out of my way
to keep the fragrance near me.

you are gasoline.
you are *****.
you are the empty svedka bottle lying on the floor.

your beautiful, beautiful liquid poison rots my ribs.
i am slowly killing myself for you
but i'll be ******
because i can't stop reeling us counting constellations
within my spinning projector mind.

there are so many reasons as to why i should stop myself.
hell,
you're the reason for the never-healing cat scratches on my forearm,
but you're an effortless mosaic of a human being.

your laughter is light.
internally you are genuine.
i can only see the flowers in your eyes
and yet they are nonetheless poisonous.

i hope that one day
i can turn your storm clouds
to warm rain.

all the better for dancing.

i never stopped loving your sunset eyes.
2. your laugh makes flowers grow in my chest,
can you smell them?
3. i worry about you.
4. i wish i could see your insides,
even though you're self-conscious of your organs.
5. your teeth are carved of marble,
6. and i might be obsessive,
7. but sometimes, your smile gives me a sunburn.
8. i wish that i could be closer to you, always.
9. i can't stop wearing the sweater to bed that reminds me of you,
10. and i wake up sweating,
11. but it's better than opening my eyes to see your ghost dissipating next to me.
12. i think
13. (i know)
14. that you don't feel seeds sprouting in your ribs when i am close.
15. not anymore.
16. you're too far,
17. and no matter how much i pace, i can't reach you.
18. i carry you on my shoulders
19. but i can feel you tumble,
20. onto the ground, willingly.
21. i think too much of you,
22. too highly,
23. and too often.
24. when i'm drunk and stumbling, i hope to feel your hand on my back.
25. you are sunlight emanating from the clouds,
26. but you are fading from me.
27. please come back.
28. i hate the heavenly chisel that shaped your bones.
29. i daydream about you in traffic,
30. and at work,
31. and in passing.
32. i'm so sorry,
33. i love you.

i am a vessel of unreturned love.
i am leaking.
a crack in the bottom,
i drip out more than i fill.

unnamed faces floating through my bed,
and my car,
and unnamed homes.

attempting to fix my broken stature
by sealing the cracks with clay,
solid in the moment,
but nothing more than temporary.

only you can weld the hole.
only you hold the tools.
i hope you can pass the torch.

hold me more closely
leaves sprouting from your vine limbs
I am your rock wall
cling to my jagged outline
I water your flowering heart
clean, direct from the tap
nestled in your terracotta ribcage
my toes are shrouded in mulch
I am the night
but you bloom in the moonlight
you bask in the light of my eyes
as much as they are hidden in the fog
your roots have twisted into my soil
and we live in eternal spring
symbiotic photosynthesis

you are warm.
2. you are so gentle with me.
3. your eyes are of earth,
4. and the garden in my chest flourishes.
5. you are having *** while it’s raining,
6. and i have never more truly made love.
7. you take the water out of my lungs,
8. and i am no longer drowning.
9. laying on your chest is being at home.
10. you make me want to wake up,
11. just so i can study your sleeping mouth.
12. our souls belong near one another.
13. i love it when you drive my car,
14. one hand on my thigh.
15. you smile and i squint,
16. for you have the light of a dying star.
17. we are both supernovas,
18. we burn brightly,
19. and even after i smolder i’ll be holding your hand.
20. i will intertwine my fingers with yours into the afterlife.
21. there is nothing better than being close to you.
22. you have handed me a life vest
23. and shown me how to float.
24. i love it when you snore,
25. and you love me more than a fresh pack of camel blues.
26. i have never once doubted that
27. your love for me is true,
28. and every day you make me see
29. the rest of my life.

you are the smell of sunflower oil
for frying chips;
my coworker's perfume.

your warmth is winter.
off-white walls,
snow-covered tar,
close together,
the windows open,
the fan oscillating.

"you'll be around later, right?"
you questioned as i crept out of bed,
headed to work.
i nodded,
you grinned,
fell asleep again,
this time alone.

in my memory
you are sitting.
the table in the back,
surrounded by the warmth of our friends,
guacamole in the center.

in my memory
we are near.
the futon,
treading through the snow,
trailing behind you in the hallway.

i am at your doorstep.
pacing the hallway,
heartbeat echoing,
constructing the concrete confidence
to finally just ******* kiss you,
but eventually walking back
to sleep alone.

i carry doomsday on my shoulders
and yet you have the strength
to lift it off.

five months later
and electricity still pulses through my veins
at the notion of someone breathing in my ear.

you are not here.
you are not sitting at the table in the back.
you are not sleeping next to me.

reality is jaded,
yearning that soon
my memories
and actualities
can align.