Your skin is
sharply hot,
like steam
         rising up
through vents.
You hold a piece
of sunshine
inside,
Full of beam and
radiant vapor
It reminds me of
how cold I am.
You are the sun
And I am a raindrop
welling,
about to
           fall.

My childhood bedroom was my womb
An artist's mind trapped within the warm blue paint
That encased me.
A twin bed of wrought iron
I drew names on in sharpie,
Lines of fragmented musings
Littering the space between breath and being.
I gestated myself there,
Beyond the touch of others
I was everything and nothing
A ball of hope and pain
A rudimentary cross-stitch of dreams dying early
Stuffed animal nostalgia
And my first trips into womanhood.
My carpet a sea of tears,
Broken discs and sighs that never even reached
The windowpane.
In the youth of my room,
I waded through my own fantasies
Thick enough for rain boots.
I intricately spun webs of delusion,
Of love.
I conjured up my own demons
In the absence of fear--
In the safety of my enshroudment.
It became a lesser known evil
Staying within the basement of my body,
That still floods me
With fantastical depression.
I left it when I was seventeen
Young enough to still feel the overwhelming weight
Of life,
And never walked back through the door frame
That held so much
For so long.
Eventually,
Posters were ripped down
Drawings painted over,
The last scraps of who I was
Given to charity.
I'd like to think that room remains somewhere
Composed and preserved
The day it was left,
The day my innocence was
Abandoned.

I waited
Pulsing against the bubbling gray caps
Of the shoreline--
As each wave lapsed
I felt my skin growing
older.


In waiting,
Every duct crusted with salt
Valves corrode,
Hearts rust

Everything is crushed and worn down
Grinded densely into particles
That cling to the
Grains of sand
In each battering of ocean wave
That will continue
Longer than humanity will
Care to exist

as I stand
Waiting

Wistfully I sit across the table from you
Praying that something will leap from your mouth
Cognizant of romance--
I wait for fire to lick at your lips,
A shutter of ice to make you tremble,
Words that will release you
Uncaged you
Let you fall towards me,

Cascade
like a waterfall down my back,
Swell against my hips
Like a ripening seed pod
Drip like rain

And watch as I unfold, petal and stigma.

But you stay sitting there and I stay watching you
Cold calculating eyes and
thin firm mouth
While my insides burn like fireflies in the light of
a midsummer's eve

I’ve been walking around
With a broken
heart
For as long as I can remember--

But I think
everyone
has.

I think everyone carries
              sadness
Inside their bones
Like a
second shell
of cartilage,

Like a bird
thrashing its wings
against
a cage,

Like crickets vibrating
hollowly
against the
darkness,

it consumes us

Piece
by
                  piece.

We aren’t sacks of
flesh
but
bags of
longing,

                  Hopelessness

Held together by
blood
bones
The flutter of
                   thoughts,

The pulse of wind
rushing
through

nothingness.

Thinking of you is like taking a large gulp
of black
bitter
tea.

I cringe before I consume it,
Before it consumes me.
Before the acrid bite wallows in my stomach,
Churning a pall of disdain.

I never liked black tea.

I write about you
Not to breathe life into you
But to give myself a wide berth,
circling your truth.

I want to feel to solace in knowing I suffered
for a reason,
Though unbeknownst
Still—

As I carry your blood, your genetic coding,
The feet that look an identical version
to yours.

I tell myself I forget,
And for the most part,
I do.
I don’t know where you are,

What you're doing,
The state of your health,
Physical
and
mental.

Your thoughts, day to day
Empty musings,
What makes you laugh
What makes you
cry

If you even still do those things anymore.

I carry much more than your feet,
your hair,
your chromosomes;

Nuances and habits of my youth
Things I do or do not do
because of
you.

And yes,
I have secured my self worth
Long after you discarded me.

Yes, I'm doing fine

And maybe one day
I will have a little boy
That looks just like you,

A reminder of my past
of how I came into this world
of what is still
inside of
me,

That you will never
know.

I would lose myself

Even at a young age I knew
To struggle with reality was a losing battle.
I gave myself to the solar system, the dark matter
Mars that burned above the horizon.

I watched night come and go.

Stars wander and fall,
Always finding their way back home

I plotted an entire life
Detached
Living in my darkened sky
Feeling the things I could not feel
In the light.

I wandered as the stars did,
Though I never found my way home.

I passed my retrograde;
I spun too passionately,
Feverishly

And fell off the edge of the universe.