Six girls.
Four bunk beds.
Freshman year.
College.
We are all nervous.
Elbows and knees. Awkward.
Like being packed into a cattle car.
Rewind 6 years.
Homeless, living in the back of a minivan.
Three children, and our mother.

Sleeping together in a single motel bed
Nervous for morning.

Elbows and knees.
I am built for building.
Made to create.
Hands like carpenters, I make a home out of anywhere I go.
Learned to carry it on my back.
To take things with me.

And now, I am almost nineteen year old and I have been living out of boxes for the past two months.

Out of containers filled with my own clothing.
I feel like I can’t find stillness.
Or have silence.

I haven’t been alone in two months.
I am sleeping with the lights on.
They call this temporary housing,
For all the students who applied late.
Like me.

But I didn't think I would be here.
But I was raised poor,
remember the minivan,
so a free college education tasted like..
Like you’re starving, and your mom’s food stamps haven’t came in yet, and you’re at the grocery store,
and its Saturday,

and they’re handing out free samples.

And I feel lucky.
And I feel blessed.
And I feel grateful.
And I feel slighted.
And I feel frustrated.
And I feel tired.
And I feel angry.

Angry that I am this easy to tear down.
That I am ticker tape,
salvage yard,
construction zone.
That the four walls of the home I've tried to build inside of myself can be so easily burned down.

Can be destroyed.
A fire alarm in my chest, and a flooded basement.
That I can’t find peace in the only home I've ever had.

There are motel signs.
Blinking,
three am,
and my mother’s credit card is being declined.
And my little sister won’t stop crying.

And we are in a homeless shelter when I’m 6.

And we’re in another when I’m 8.

And another when I’m 13.

I’m 19 in a few months,
And this dorm feels like another one.

And I’m convinced they build these places, on purpose.
Temporarily temporary.

To show us how temporary we all are.
That we can’t take anything with us.

That I can't take anything with me.

Where ever it is that I am going.
Where ever it is that I might end up.
I’m just praying..

Praying there is a warm bed to sleep in when I get there.

Don’t grow up.
Grow down,
deep into this earth.
So deep you forget what part of your body your heart belongs in.
Be nothing except wet earth.
Be an open mouth. Be a seed.
Be every language our ancestors ever spoke.
Be a dialect ten thousand years old, and still breathing.
You woke up one morning and asked me,

“Am I pretty?”

Please be spring.
Be new blossoms and the way the ground smells after rain.

My mother came to me and told me we were giving you away.
Before you had even taken your first breath,
she said we couldn't do this.
Take care of another baby, when our backs were already broken. Poverty was a ***** word we shared sheets with.
I told our mother, that you were already ours.

That you could never really belong to anyone else.

And we kept you.

And when you were born, you had these eyes.
These, ocean kissed sky, and slept all night, kind of eyes.
These eyes that told me that we all come from the same place.

These eyes that said
“Ive been here before.
Ive done this already.
Get ready for this.
Watch me.”

And you’re eight years old now, with a broken leg, and you've been screaming for two months.

And I cried the day the car hit you.
And I laughed when you woke up.

And you’re eight years old, and I haven’t stopped believing you belong to me.

This cocky, loud, screaming mess.
This spaghetti stained, angry little monster.
This bully, who swallows her own meanness.
You've got a venom about you kid.
A house set on fire, inside you, kinda crazy,
sometimes I can even smell the smoke.

I haven’t stopped believing you belong to me.

And I wanna tell you,

You don’t owe anyone beauty.

You aren't in in-debt to some universal credit collector.
You don’t owe anyone make up, or 40$ worth of hair product.

You are the best kind of disaster.
You are laughing until you cry, and secrets you promise to keep but never do.
You are irrevocably yourself, and no one else,
and

******* It Little Girl,

You are beautiful.
The best kind of beautiful.

But I am afraid.
Afraid of what 8 years looks like, when it meets ten, and four more. When you’re tall enough to see your reflection in the bathroom mirror.

What you will do to yourself.

I pray to God.
I pray you meet someone who teaches you to love yourself.
Because I know you are still angry.
Angry at this world, and your life.
Its like you walked into an overcrowded room,
and no one noticed you
and you haven’t let us forget what we owe you.

I pray to God you kiss your fingertips.
Bless them for each meal they give you.
There is nothing more intimate than feeding yourself.
Baby, counting calories is no way to live your life.
There is nothing more ancient than a sunrise.
You are a horizon, a tissue papered sky,
do not cut pieces of yourself away.
You are not ******* gift wrap.

I pray to God you listen to your own voice.
See strength in the way your body never gives up.
That you are Iowa,
illegal fire *******,
set off in our backyard.
You matter to me.
That you are red and blue police sirens.
You will make people nervous.
Get used to it.
You will shake the ground with your voice.
Get used to it.
You are powerful, the way the ocean is powerful,
the way it devours cargo ships,
air craft liners,
churning up lost Atlantis’,
turning stones into sand,
and swallowing this planet slowly.
That you are meant to exist.
Remain.
Endure.
That you are beauty.
That you are billions of atoms.
My solar sister.

You belong to me.  
But baby, you belong to you.
Own this.
Take it,
like a testament,
and write it.
Put it in a box and save it.
Mail it back to your own house, and read it.
Be it.
Breath it.
But please,
please,
don’t ever forget it.

This is for Barbra Harris, the founder of the ‘Project Prevention’ program, a foundation based around paying poor, drug addicted women to sterilize themselves.

I have lived 18 years, and I’ve never been angrier.
I was raised to believe that white is an absent of hue, a lack there of, an identity that pigment hadn’t given me.
A sense of self, who was still running from me.
But today, I think I finally found my color.
A shade, an identity the color of gritted teeth and hell fire, jaws snapping, I haven’t stopped seething.

I was brought up inside the walls of narcotics anonymous meetings, on stale oatmeal cookies and burnt coffee.

I have seen scalding cobalt, empty indigo, and every single color of self destruction the spectrum has created, wrapped in ultra-violet - nick name them disaster.

Torrential rains and hurricanes, volcano hearts with lungs made of wildfire.

No one chooses to be a drug addict.
No one decides, as a child - that their spines were meant to bend backwards into question marks, body contorted around chasing something that will destroy them.
Born to slit ivory in two, and bleed black like the stars do.
They were children once.

Daughters who were beaten by fathers, and sons who watched their mother’s commit suicide,
children who were too young,
whose skin bruised around the fingerprints of trauma.
They were shaken, born vibrating, their bones have never stopped craving silence.
So if a needle brought it to them, or a pipe, a second of stillness, it became the only thing that mattered.

Using, drinking, snorting, shooting, swallowing, smoking, inhaling an answer to the questions their spines were asking.
Maybe you’ve never heard the sound of a body betraying itself, but this is it.
There will be a skylit shades of remorse they will turn themselves waiting for the answers.
An explanation for all the
“whys”
and “yous”
and the “I would quit if I just could,
but I can’t,
and I don’t know how not to,
when the only time the world stands still is when I’m high enough to look down on myself.”
Drug addicts use because they are broken people trying to mend broken pieces, swallowing shards of broken glass that end up slitting their own throats.

If you have these shattered shrapnel pieces wedged inside yourself for long enough, its hard to remember existing without them.

I watched my mother, break in and out of sobriety like a jail cell she had swallowed the key to.
No one realizes the cage we’re all trapped inside of, is our own ribs.
She created me, took all the best piece of herself and made me. Like a patch work quilt, my edges didn't always come together easy.
But I thank God, every single day for it.

Each Christmas spent in a homeless shelter,
every hour I spent shoving notes beneath the bathroom door, begging her to come out,  
every relapse, recovery, overdose, hours waiting by the phone for a hospital call, every midnight I couldn't sleep without her by my side,
Every twelve step program, a serenity prayer for seven days sober, key chain necklaces and chips she'd always kiss and say “this ones it, baby”.
Every ****** up, angry, starving, man and woman who carried a story in their lungs, and let me hear it,
Every plate full of co-dependency she fed me,
Every ounce of anger and sorrow she gave me,
Every time I asked her, why,
Every moment she disappointed me.
Every time she'd say she was sorry, and tried to mean it,
Every time I wore her mistakes like battle wounds
She destroyed me
But ******* it, I am so ******* grateful she did.  

Because she broke me, into a thousand pieces.
But its true what they say, bones always heal stronger the second time around.
I’ve been given this opportunity,
this legend in my blood, this authentic, “I’ve been through hell and back” mentality,
this dedication to myself.

And I will not let you, or anyone else take that away from me.

I’ve got a born and bred monster, asleep in my esophagus, brimstone and fury, I am whole-heartedly dedicated to my own ambition.

And this climb, upward through the wreckage of my own existence, has given me more than you will ever understand.

Allowing privileged white people to discuss the nature of poverty, doesn’t find answers.

But I have mine. And I will tell you, there is value here. Inside of me.
I am that child,
I am that statistic,
Alive still born and still screaming,

You can not get rid of me.

You,
apple core thin, mannequin faced girl at the check out, -
You are wearing your boyfriend’s bruises again.
I wonder if you asked him to apologize afterward.
But instead he wrote it out on your skin, with black and blue ink and the thing is they don’t make a cover up strong enough to blend blue into bone and your angry yellows into ivory again.

I’m sure they tried to market it though.
“For those days when his knuckles say yes but you said no”.
Eyelids the color of ****** flowers, soft pink hues, a shade of human that you shouldn't be able to buy in a bottle –

but do.

You memorized the taste of red dye number four.
Synthetically manufactured -
Made to remember how easy growing up was,
and how default growing old has become.

Fed off a ******* diet, I’m sure you were spoon fed it.

Nurtured by nature, you started caving yourself into pieces when you learned how liquid the definition of beauty can be.

Scalding one moment,
solid still the next.
You’ve grown used to leaving bits of it behind.
Taking hot enough showers to wash away the scent of your own shame,
self loathing is meal served at the supper table.

With Mommy’s plastic surgery endeavor and Daddy  bench pressing the weight of a childhood his parents never gave him,
and you’re left home alone watching
infomercials –
every single thing that’s wrong with you – they've got something for it.
And all for the low price of your dignity on a dotted line.

Skin,
eyes,
lips,
nose,
hips,
waist,
brows,
teeth,
knees,
stomach,
feet.

Stand beneath an alter made of reflections.
Circle all the parts you are told you’re supposed to change.
Be naked.
Be nothing but stain.
Be imperfection and dishonesty, be one thousand times more cruel than candle light,
be antagonist,
be soul trapped in body, be body trapped in self,
be twenty pounds to heavy, and 100 too light.
Be you,
but not be you,
be fake,
be plastic,
be touchable,
be fuckable,

be anything except for yourself.

Hair extensions,
dye, blush,
powder,
lipstick,
corset,
bronzer.
Be nothing except product. Be sculpted from silicon, be shallow, be empty.

Be pretty.

There can’t be anything wrong with you, if you don’t exist anymore.

Selling young women the concept of hating themselves is a multimillion dollar business.
They are liars and they work on commission.
For five year old girls today there is a 0.003% chance she will become a lawyer, but a 42% chance she will wish she was thinner by time she reaches third grade.

They've left cigarette burns on the backs of your hands, Marlboro menthol lies they've scorched into your skin.  

We only call it a system because it must be broken.

It only works for them.

So do not fix yourself, girl.
Sit before a mirror and number the things you atleast don’t hate.
Repeat them when no one is listening.
Meet a boy,
who doesn't hate any of you,
who's voice is forgiveness for hating yourself.

Have a daughter and remind her not a single thing about is wrong with her.

Kiss her fingers and her toes.

Mold your paper heart into a love letter to yourself, for once.
Remember you are constellations and star dust, sunflowers and sea shells.
Do not cut pieces of yourself away, for anyone, do not lose any of you.

Do not be left overs for his hammer shaped hands to hold.
Do not let media, nor men abuse you.
Be brave like an 11 year old girl and fight back.

Lipstick and blush like war paint.

You are no small thing.  
Be earthquake weather,
be the necessities of your own disaster, but never destroy you, girl.
Nothing before this mattered.
Please,
Have an affair with yourself & write your own name at the bottom of the page.

Girl.

Love yourself shamelessly.

I passed a girl driving home - All midnight and silhouette.
She was ten seconds, or maybe it was just forty feet from goodbye.
Forty to the pavement.
Forty from crushing, and bone, and twisted up, legs bent into angel wings. Maybe it was forty feet from hello.

I watched the police cars surround her.
Red and blue lights screaming into the night sky, I can still hear their silence.
I parked near the bridge and waited.
Felt like these hands of mine could catch something, maybe a baby bird who leaped from the nest too soon.
Tell her she was important.
Tell her she mattered,
to me,
to this,
to something more than Iowa winter and the leather interior of a police car.
Tell her she had living to do.
Constellation ancestors to make proud.
And boys to fall in love with.
New born daughters to hold, ones  to tell they were important,
and mattered,
to her.

When I got home I couldn't stop shaking.
Hands made of glass and rose thorn, I wasn't meant to hold anything, not even myself.
A repeat, a never ending loop, a film strip set on fire in the back of my head, watch the blinding white destroy it from my memory.

It could have been me

It could have been me

It could have been me

It should have been me

I’m a match.
Not a kerosene lamp.
Burning up quick.
I’m not built to last.
I promise.
Two parts destruction and one part **** up.
There are mornings where walking across six lanes of oncoming traffic seem easier than getting out of bed.
There are evenings I spend begging my fingertips to leave my wrists alone.
I've got a sob asleep in my chest, and it will never leave me.
I wrote it out on sticky notes, on my ceiling, asking what ever is above me,
God,  
or maybe someone more kind than him,
are normal people this self destructive?
Were all the parts of me, even mine to begin with?
Am I in-debt to this.
This feeling.
This quick stick, explosive dynamite blood.
I was afraid of my shadow at eight, and here I am, afraid of myself at eighteen.
Afraid of what I could do to myself.

I’m the open wound and I cant stop the bleeding.

But there are good days.
Good weeks even.
Weeks where I stop counting my heart beats, where I stop being afraid that they’ll run out.
I will turn my assignments in on time, and stop crying on the drive to school.
I will pay for dinner and laugh at jokes.
I will feel strong enough to catch her. Bridge jumper

But there will be weeks where I am forty feet from the ground.
Forty feet from being six feet beneath it.
I will be the baby bird and she’ll be the one to catch me.

Or maybe we'll meet one another

And we’ll both only be forty feet away from knowing that this isn't the end but the beginning of something better.

When We ****
You Won't Hear The Sound
Of A Coffin Opening
Because
I'm Not Dead Inside Anymore.

I... Wanna wrap my hands around a thick pole

of a carousel ride on our first date at the carnival.

I wanna swirl my tongue swiftly around

an ice cream cone when we take a trip to the ice cream parlor.

I wanna ride hard and *******

when we go horseback riding at your cousin's ranch...  

I wanna feel it pounding into me,

your heart when we dance close.

I wanna feel it on my face,

I'm talking about sunlight!

Why are you laughing?!

If you're too uncomfortable to hear

and I'm equally uncomfortable to say,

then why are we here, this is poetry, isn't it?

If I was a boy talking about banging chicks would that make this easier to swallow?

Does femininity have to keep me bound & gagged, I've heard my mother tell me enough times to act like a lady
But what does that mean?

Legs crossed, eyes open, voice low, mascara stenciled eyelids with crimson scarlet lips,

They'd say she tastes like innocence-  isn't that why we dress up like school girls?

Pigtails and short skirts.

Call me naughty one more ******* time

Every video labeled with triple x's is marketed to the opposite ***, but we deserve to feel good too.
Even if that means inviting men into the hotel rooms of our bodies, ill scale the sheets to find myself between them if I have to.
The pursuit of happiness belongs to us too,

and if that means ******* a couple of dudes, what's it to you?

Harlet,
stumpet,
****
*****,
*****,
****

It all comes down to what we keep between our thighs:

All I know is that we turn against each other, each article of our unclothed bodies is like at crime scene wrapped in yellow tape, call me a massacre because I've been killing boys since the day they tasted my breath and called me pretty.

Beautiful
Gorgeous
Stunning
Perfect
Plastic

Carved from silicon, I'm developing cancerous distractions, the world painting my body and it's actions side show attractions. They were ring leaders in this carnival of distortion. Grotesque and picturesque. All they wanted from this was a contortionist.

They asked for this
And It was always them,

Obsessed and hell bent.
They asked to see us naked, stripped down, hollow eyes, expected innocence, pretty mouths and closed lips, didn't want to hear the echo of their screams in our own voice, dignity they told us to have,

Didn't mention the stacks of playboys they kept beneath their beds.
Just the images, never the women inside the pages.

They always want a girl who's good with her mouth

But they want lips sealed when it come to where she got the practice.
Shattering their images of their impossibly perfect
Barbie girls
Bottle blonde
bubble gum pink and baby blue eyes.

We must be a commodity

Carved up like a good piece of meat and subservient served up for your judgement. Size me up like I haven't memorized the contours and calculated the curvatures; the kind of scrutiny to make your heart weep.

A masterpiece, but Mona Lisa kept all her clothes on, I think? Shallow but we stretch miles in all directions, I keep seeing mirror reflections, in every store window, if manikins can't stand up on their own, how can we?

I have to tell myself we don't have to stand up to stand for something.

And don't demean others with the word *****, because what I keep between my thighs is nothing weak.

Keep trying to maintain my innocence. Shame anything that might just be our liberation:
bare  knees, shoulder blades, and bra straps.

Written in the composition lines of our stretch marks it will tell us what provocative really means, but we haven't found it yet.

So how could you attempt to define what parts of us are too distracting?

I will paint my body honey harlot, summertime scarlet, and streak in the streets. A stark **** liberty.

I wanna be the type of women who is comfortable enough to take her clothes off.

Dance on stage if it means feeding a family, if it means taking money out of the hands of those who don't deserve it, if it means paying for an education I can't breath without.

I want to be the type of woman who opens the temple of her body, for tours if she has to

To resort and regain the kind of dignity they write stories about,
I want to be the type of woman who lays down her life, for her own children when their mouths are empty,

I'll take it like a *****.
No, daddy won't be ashamed because how could he be?
He bred a warrior, a fighter,
and he always said, it's not how big your muscles are, tough is how much you can take and get back up.

**And women always get back up.