Wet lips flush with sorrow
Bruise pink and blood seeps
Drips and pools into sterile
Collarbones
Hands are cold, winter breeze
Ghosting over snow flesh
Smothering dark, preserved
Bone marrow and tree branches
Shaking in a fine tremor an
Endless earthquake rolling
Its hips into the molten core
Of another being in pieces
Of thigh and heart and blown
Brain all over the highways
Hazy with heat and potential
For violence and passion
So similar we dig our fingertips
Into calves unsure whether
We are beyond simple life
Beyond stardust and nebulae
Or already buried beneath
Cherry tear whisky and loam
Too heavy and human to
Feel the press of flesh joy
In places we flush emotion
And sing me to short endless
Sleep and crumpled hair under
Your arms and cider breath
Temple slick with promise
Gone by in a future decomposing
In a nest of vulture and flies
Somewhere in the desert of
Times playground pieces of
Ocean filling our lungs until
We can only gasp for more
And take me take me take me
Take me take this scrap of
Fabric skin I've forgotten
Take me take these ripped
Shreds of conformity and life
Give me myself.

I am from soft hushes of Spanish lullabies

From the coaxing voice of my mother.

I am the smoke blowing out of Lionel trains

Orders being asserted on the speaker overhead

From the controlling voice of my father.

I am from the hiding spots around the house

The muffled loveless shouting 

Serving as a backdrop throughout the days

A one-sided bitter sham.

I’m from simmering heat year round 
From king the tut and Felix the cat.

I’m the happy go lucky type on the outside

And the riddled with worry on the inside.

From let’s wing it! On some days 

To a sense of working myself sick to be prepared on others.

I’m from steaming milk and coffee 
With some hurricane pancakes 

To temporarily erase the pains of yesterday.

I’m from a locked away Spanish origin 
English and American hammered into my brain.

(Never my soul.) 

From the son my grandmother lost

To the black storming water,

The life my father was forced to replace.

Spanish poems rest dusty hidden away.

Turning a blind eye

Only looked over in secrecy 

Our artistic side

A lineage of writers, artists.

I am those words 

They are my second skin

Rising from the shadows.

i slipped the silk fabric over the curve of my hip and the scarred flesh of my thigh in a dressing room with three of my friends behind me, ******* in the fat of my stomach. they say black is supposed to be slimming but it only made me bloated; maybe the mirror was a liar (i know it didn't lie). an elephant with too-thick eyeliner and a too-thick body stared back at me and i bit through the skin of my lip till it bled and i wanted to live on some other planet where elephants were appreciated.

"that's the best one you've tried on yet," someone said, but i couldn't hear them over the red-eyed demon within me which whispered of shoving ******* down the trachea, messy but quick, everything gone in an instant. if this was my best one, i was doomed because my eyes were glazed over with the misunderstanding that beauty would never apply to me.

"i'm just gonna go- go to the restroom-" and the red eyed thing inside me cracks its whip, takes over the nerves in my brain, makes my legs sprint to the toilets and it's over, it's done, the food gone among stomach acid, falling hair, and teeth erosion.

i can only imagine what the restaurant worker who was forced to clean rainbow-coloured ***** in the toilet thought.

I hate that I'm up thinking about you when I know I hardly cross your mind. Thinking about my lost innocence. Thinking about how everyone's told me that I'm older now and need to move on. And I have, but I can't forget the feeling.
As a child you're supposed to feel loved, wanted, adored, yet I always felt like I was a burden. You may be asking yourself, why? Well, maybe it was because I tried to hold my father's closed fists.

I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay I'm gay
it kind of
spills off my tongue
when I don’t want it to
an
impulse
a
burning choke in my throat
falling out of me when I wish it would stay inside
when strangers are around
when
they really don’t need to know

it’s painted on my face
it’s written on the backs of my hands
my collarbone is burning white hot with a tell
and my eyes watering every secret of it

can they tell?
can everyone see right through me?
I’m
too scared to ask
somehow
also too scared to keep it inside

It wants out more than anything
but
she wants to be safe more than anything

I will ask you a question

“Do you remember the child you once were?

Who colored the crayons beyond the lines, shaping everything in that child’s imagination.

That painted the rivers green and the trees blue, full of wonder, putting nothing in order.

Now, I ask you this… What happened to that child?”

Why is that child now organizing the shapes, his head now a machine on rotate

He solves the puzzles but not his dreams
He gives the leaves a touch green, and rivers with blue...

What happened to the child who once ruled the world?

Now the World ruled the child."

december is near.
blink your eyes,
december is here.
here come the platters piled high with
sins.
is this really "the most wonderful time of the year'?
god, it all
looks
so
good.
the whispers curl around my ears.
no. no.  fat. calories. crunches. jumping jacks. calories. fat. weight.
the holidays aren't about family.
this is war.
this is about self-control.
this is about my honor.
on goes the lip gloss, the too-big dresses
so nobody notices how fat i am.
"have you lost weight?"
stop making fun of me.
"aren't you going to eat?"
i'm nauseous. lies
i already ate. lies
i'm eating later. lies
don't touch me.
don't hug me.
don't speak to me.
surrounded by sins
calories
fat
bait for their traps.
*just one bite?

Locked in an
insane
            asylum
they are called crazy by all.
Sitting, sitting, staring;
Ranting about aliens,
watching the toddler
    float, floating
in the air in front of them.
On a schedule,
    tick, tick, ring
goes the bell.

They believe what
       you
or I
will not.
They see the world
the way we
       never
will.
"You're delusional,
up is up, not
       umop
Wrong is wrong,
       not write."

But what if,
not impossibly,
for the
             better,
not him
or her is delusional,
but
       you
or I?

I wonder if you knew
the faces you were making
when you saw your dead sister.