pink lip stick, purple eyeliner, orange bracelets,
green hair, writing with black ink on white paper
blowing blue smoke rings into the air, with time the
walls turn yellow
everyone always compliments the pigmentation on my
face, they call them freckles, they're "cute"
everyone always wonders about my color choices, they think it's
funny, that there's too many vibrant color and they don't "match"
they think there is something wrong with my eyes, "maybe she's color
blind"
but that's not it at all, because all i see is colors, i do not see anyone as a person,
but as a color.
they wonder, they do not ask. they sit and stare or smile and nod.
if they did ask, they would realize,
to pigment means to color, and i am forever color in my existence
inside and outside the lines

you can give me all the
red roses you want but
there will always be
black weeds in my failing
lungs and thorns in my
sworn off heart and
constellations that i cant
quite make sense of in my
head.

and i'm sorry that i cant
apologize for not loving
you as much as you loved
me.

i know it's been 8 years and i know
the skin replenishes every 27 days and
i know that every molecule and every atom
that was present when you took my freedom
from me and replaced it with guilt does not exist
anymore but somehow through all the showers so
hot that satan would hiss at the contact and scrubbing
so hard at my skin that it's raw and bleeding, i can still feel
your sinful hands ripping the only thing i ever believed in straight
from me without even breathing
a word.

and sometimes,
at 3 a.m. when the
memories come flooding
in, when i can't cry because
i am not sad, i am angry
i wonder why if my bones
and my liver and my
stomach and every atom
and every molecule and every
bit of my body can be renewed
at least every 5 years, why can't my
memories change too?

i am the last seconds of the sunset you tried to take a picture of
but couldn't quite capture it quickly enough
i'm sorry that i can't be in love with you
or anything really
i'm sorry that i'm always moving so fast that i'm nothing but a blurry figure
in your peripheral vision
i'm sorry that i won't even bother to ask you to keep up
just because i know you can't. because no one ever has.
and i'm sorry that when i leave (and i will)
you will remember why storms are named after people

you are
friday night dinners and
red lip stained coffee cups
and family photos and skilled
sarcasm and twelve trips to
disney and your love for
avocados and adventure. you
are sunday morning bike rides
and hand written letters and
power outages with candlit ghost
stories and week long sleepovers and
summer dresses and worn out boots
and accident prone vacations and
themed birthday parties and forgetfulness
and gerbera daisies and singing too loudly
and too off key and GOOD mistakes and
better memories
you are constellations and sea glass and colliding galaxies
and sometimes the calander turns
like a lottery and once in a blue moon
you can find a girl with fractured
sapphires in her irises and a heart too
big for her ribcage and a spine as strong
as a lightning bolt
so thank you january twenty sixth,
for michele.

you can pin all the flowers
you want on me and tattoo
your memories on me and
burn your love into my skin

but i will always have black
weeds and dying stars inside
of me and  n  o  t  h  i  n  g
will ever be able to wash the
black ink from my hands

you do not
get to slice
at my neck
when there
are already
knives in
my words