Since I was seven,
I had questions swarming through my head like bees.
Sometimes, I'd let a bee fly out if I was feeling strong that day,
But many kept quiet in the corners of my mind,
Stinging my neurons,
Creating a sticky mess of mysteries.
And for almost ten years, I thought that maybe if I could let them all go,
Then my head could heal,
And then I'd be at peace —
Because when they're loud—
They're buzzing,
And emphatic—
So, mind me while I ask these questions, so I can sleep tonight:
- So, is water really wet?
- Why is that when people see someone fail, they instantly fill with relief?
- Wasn’t the world supposed to end six years ago?
- Why do I grow so much?
- Is being called a 'walking tree' okay?
- Are any of us really okay?
- So, when I was younger, I was told to grow up, but now that I have, why am I told that act too grown?
- Is it okay to miss someone who's not worth the space of missing? Or the longing?
- Can bones get wet? Or are they already wet?
- So, when they say that our people are free, why are we not?
- When they say that segregation is over, why am I still put at the end of the line?
- Has anyone thought about their bones not being bones, but ash instead? (I did)
- Is it just me, or does it seem like my people have to work three times as hard just to reach equality with the superior?
- So why is it so easy to not talk, and keep my lasting breath in my chest, rather than to waste it on ears who won't give my words a listen?
- Why are we still at the bottom after we built this world with our callused hands?
- So, if they tell us that we were built to fall apart, is that why my seams are splitting?
- I thought you said the old people die first?
- How is it so easy for parents to leave and not come back?
- In a world full of opposition, why is my mind on their side and not mine?
- I thought you said she would come back this time?

i can't tell if it's amazing or frightful
to watch a mother of three
attend language classes
just to speak to her children again
as she signs herself away to the integration
of our nation full of frauds

i think he breaks more
than he puts himself together;
because once he shatters,
he doesn’t try to piece things back up.
instead,
those million pieces
break into another million pieces,
and then he is dust
that won't blow away.
instead,
he wilts in the back of the universe,
watching the dead activity around him;
he is only collected
not put together, i guess.

“I remember the night,” he spoke in a low tone, “you had called me crying.”
I shifted around in bed, and turned over to face him. The streetlight shining through the window casted a faint orange outline on his face.
“Why was I crying?” I asked. I laid my head on his chest as I listened for his voice. I could recall the amount of alcohol I had that night, but I couldn’t remember the call. He wrapped his arm around my bare torso and pulled me closer to him.
“You were drunk. I asked what was the matter, and you said,” he inhaled deeply, “you said you were afraid. And when I asked why, you said because you were falling in love with me.”

I’m not much of a talker anymore.
I don’t hold conversations‒
I dislike the discomfort of hearing
My own voice dilute empty rooms
And reminding me I’m powerless
I’m not much of a talker anymore.
It’s 2017, and I‒
I mean we‒
Still don’t have the power to speak for ourselves.
Rather us,
We fold the laundry
While they ruin‒
I mean run‒
The world.
In my household,
My mouth was sewn shut
Before I learned to use it as a weapon.
And while my throat aches for the power to speak‒
My tired feet pleading for a break from the walk of shame.
I‒
I mean we‒
Are tired of speaking
Only to remain unheard.

I remember when I sat at that bar,
Thoughts in my head colliding like car crashes-
I was in the process of emptying my bones and my wallet-
I just got paid that morning.
I was already floating on the stool,
But it wasn't enough
Because you were still crossing streets in my mind
Picking at the last garden on the corner of the crashes
Calendulas and canna lilies
Lightly decorating my frontal lobe-
I wanted you gone.

Later that night,
I went back home
To my haunting four walls
Lines of poetry on the knives
Ready to jab you like nobody else could
Lines of thrill on the table
Cutting edges of my desolation
Just a cheap trip
To somewhere you aren't

It's easier to not think about you
Because you take too much from me
And give nothing in return.
In my body,
I have nothing.
You took my persona,
And I was so vulnerable
I sold the inner working in my bones for 30% off
And a pack of cigarettes.

I'm only filling voids you created
But I'm running out of sources,
If I leave right now-
If I'm off this earth in the morning,
What would you do with the parts you took?

over a year
of waiting for the agony to takes its course
the pacing in my room at two in the morning
quick breaths toppling each other, never to catch up to my lungs
i never got the chance to unknot—
to replant my roots into someone new
or into different floorboards
yet i was too restless to flourish
into what i assumed was supposed to be my "awakening"
but see, my nerves were too messy and tangled
and i was impatient
so i let the wires undo themselves
or should i say waited—
because it never happened
so more and more nerves connected and collided
creating a construction of clumsiness and clustered words
isolation was becoming me
and i was becoming isolation.

from sitting in my room for far too long,
i have cuts on my hands and scars on my mind
too many anti-psychotics and psychedelics
soon enough, i was melting into my office chair
with sorrow sitting next to me, patting my back
leaving burn marks on my upper right shoulder—
they still ache time to time
and if i was really up there,
my heart would talk to me about the agony
and how it's always picking pieces from my ribs and throat
causing me to speak less and think more
but she did say that it was passing,
that i must be patient—
that was seven months ago.

a week after that talk,
i began traveling further passed that state
trying to talk to agony itself
i was so out of it
my bones weren't bones
and my feet were tingling,
but i had to keep traveling.
i was tired of waiting;
i couldn't keep up with the pacing
i was growing weak
and i just wanted a break
but, i never got to him,
and i never got that break.

and that's why i have bags under my eyes
because the sadness ran out of places to hide so
it hid under the deprivation—
agony was coming
but it was just passing through.