I am a lost and not found item
when she leaves
I am a scratchy polyester
elbow patchwork sweater
picked up from mustard sidelines
forgotten when bell rings
I wrinkle away in cardboard box,
Puppy eyeing
Any stingy non owner
Is there any thief to claim me?
My stretched gap knit
is your shallow water made of holes
At six foot six
You brag that your toes brush the bottom of the same dune
That our toddler's tootsie touches too
She is taller than you
All the while the everything of me is
in the deep end,
treading ferociosly.
I dog paddle to
dolphin attorneys
and counselor coy fish
"Can you help me not drowned?"
I sink and
swallow
Algicide anger
dip crunch my lungs on shark teeth
Try to become sacred coral reef
Just for my daughter to find me

Pang after pain
My heart sinks to my feet
Every morning
I wake up to maroon socks
A trail of crimson every where I step
I am reminded
I am not the robins fluttering outside my window
I am not my cozy cobalt couch
I am not my daughter
Freedom will always come with shame
To rest is to sink into blue veins
No one will wipe my nose
Only women will love me like I love her
Like I loved you
I hold onto feminine first aid
like ancient coral roots into a deep sapphire sandy floor
Please let me be the one to crush chested ***** on heel
Instead of you
You **** milky marrow from my bones
You lick your lips on vulnerable aorta
I wrap open nape with the tentacles of my ancestors,
You ******* vampire
I wipe alligator tears from my eyes
My back wrists are sponges, they were prepared for this moment.  
Every time I breathe I gulp up salt water
I fight
I refuse to drown
For her.
You hate that she needs me more
You crumble because you cannot eat me up
Full, I sit without you.

I have one day off
24 hours solidarity
You'll be on your fifth buzz of the weekend
and I'll be swallowed by our sofa
wondering

how     the hell      did I end up here?

A sparkling ring on my finger
a beautiful dimpled mate
pricking perfection
I've lost myself in how-was-your-day's
and smiling photos of me in white

and then right when I think
I'll never be found again
underneath the ruins
of ironed button up blouses
and twice baked potatoes

My old faithful accord,
the only item left that resembles me,
will summon me
onto the road

and I'll drive forever
until I'm home

It is a crawling
a snake of emotional creeping
an ache of mishaps
pushing up, seeking an opening
a release of pressure
a leaking gasket of **** ups
a painful agony of woes
it is zap of intestinal torment
it is numb lips
a haunting light
all of it leading and glowing into the
being
the being I keep avoiding.
the feeling I keep translating into metaphors
and unoriginal analogies
I keep trying to define it
like I can touch any of this
thought bubbles float above us
To think I could grasp any of it
I reach anyways
Separating immediately when I'm clutching air
holding hands with an empty ancient lover
I disassociate from pain
trying to beat her at her own game
I try and cut off limbs that steal from
my bliss
but they remain phantom
floating around and mocking
all that is left of me.

The fire wreaks of crayons
Waxy surfaced juvenile spirit
And here I am bundled up like a burrito
In a tie blanket made for me in the 7th grade
And I keep on hearing the cracking and popping
The red and yellow licking up my yearning
The comfort of not having to respond to everything that was planned out for me
By only myself
I'm the only one to blame
I'm so grateful to have an environmental mediator
Get in the way of myself.

If there is a Jesus
He wears a dress
it sequins to the sun
as drag "devils" sing from Beyonce-glacier-tops

We, humans arrive bursting with rainbow love
While anti-humans stretch across ocean and state
a cloud of ****** and hate

If only the stars could shield our trans
Earth and ocean, permeate
Phobias
Tsunami the shame way
I beg the whole sky to open up
Create a blue orb of protection
for "the gays"

So weary
am I
but the second
I let my head forfeit
and lay upon that pillow
Energy is thrusted into my veins
a longing for something more
for every man in this world
to fall in love with me
and for what?
to be a beauty queen?
to be a temptress?
Oh foolish terrible
animalistic
heart
You are my ache
my vice
this world is only but
a mere man on the moon
reflecting hopes and dreams
and cloudy lust
Please
can just one man
enter my world
without me
immediately
and permanantly
becoming his prisoner

Black and green scale segments
My coat of arms
I twisted around sage brush for 30 years
I had predators
and potential nests
Always
Foregoing eggs
Alone but capable of swallowing the world
Moving through long narrow casing
Like a jawbreaker swallowed by an ostrich

Then I met you

.Ecdysis.

I shed thin snow skin
A layer of suffering slowly flaking off of me
A new dermis of
a love I have never known
Affection I've never shown
and a part of me never grown.

With your hands you transform rainbows
that have arched from the earth
You bare down, even in the fervor of summer's firing flame
To consecrate recipes that are born by the grit of the soil, not by nursing mother
Your loved ones raise hands and bounce up and down,
begging to be invited around your wooden table
and feast with fierce female culinary queen,
and her doting family

My ******* are
raisins
faucets
grape bubble gum
chewed and twisted, masticated into purple milk
That resurrect into lactose layers regurgitated on the scoop of my neck where I used to sweep wrists over with the latest from Dior—
Now nape exudes a hint of expired Greek yogurt with a hint of sweet snot
Dior Dior, make something that isn’t swimming in alcohol
Or can I swim in alcohol?
Instead of bobbing above with engorged ****, ankle weights of an open gummed mouth
While I close mine and smile every time anyone asks me how it is to be a mother
Of course love her, open mouthed and all
So unapologetically in want
I envy the way she sprawls open
Screaming and ripping, demanding what she deserves
When do we learn to be hushed, silenced for what we hunger?
How I learn from you, sweet Audrey

I'm smiling as I write this
feeling a burst of bright
light up my insides
My hair is bouncy
from all the floating thoughts
of beauty
twirling throughout my brain

I have a smirky
quirky little step
and I  might swim up to the ceiling
in the ocean of glee
that surrounds me
the little fish
of freedom
will join on the journey
of joy

My lashes are catching
stars shooting from my pupils
instead of thick aligator tears of sadness
And I'm frolicking on cloud nine
a cozy little comfort of cotton

My darling it's true
I'm ******* finally over you.

If I ever see you again
I'll spat insults and hope they
Spray on your aviators
like the bugs that squashed against
my windshield the last time
I drove away from you

If fate destroys me
and I am in the same pub one night
as your wormy self
I'll tell you how you're the most
arrogant, vapid, shallow, womanizing,
******* male mascot
I've ever had the disgust to know

I'll slap you hard across the face
Oh and not like Scarlett O'Hara,
you demon darling
No crushing kiss will follow
and I'll mean vengence
vile will seep through my mouth
instead of the sweet saliva
I let you taste
long ago

If I ever hear your voice
or see your mocking manequin
among my tele again
With disgraceful force
I will lift that 50 lb set
and propel that ******* screen
across the state
The way your black static apology
shattered the brightness
that used to reside
within
me

If I hear of you
one more dispicable time
I'll grow bombs maticulously
within my empty core
and time them so perfectly
that all of your dysfunctional doormat
confidants
will explode the second they come near me
and their manipulative cells
will burst
and be burried among the soil
of ***** words
you whispered in my ears

****, if I ever see you again
I'll shatter every martini glass around me
and down a fifth of fireball
and breath venomous fire
and burn you, you beastly boy
And I'll pretend beauty amongst you
and walk away, a tall glass of water
That could diffuse
that angry licking fire
that is swallowing you up

When I see you again
I won't acknowledge your existence
and I'll be dressed to the nines
and I won't do a ******* thing about it
Because you aren't worth a sentence within this stanza

But I know I am.

The drive home begins with the Smiths
And ends with the Pixies.
I merge onto punitive pessimism
Heading north
Of an unfed need
Starvation, climbing with mileage
I switch lanes
Into loneliness
And putter up through
The Snoqualmie pass
The ceremonial point
Where I disown one contempt
To adopt another
From west to east
From mountainous mercy
To a pathetic plateau
This highway carries yellow lined cynicism
And white striped weariness
These pines hold my pining
For a life I long to know
Fully

These fours hours are my grace period
Of the transformation process
From untamed flight to civilized standstill

You are visiting OUR friends
Only YOUR friends now
They met each other through US
And I met  YOU through HIM
they just adopted a baby boy named Finn
and as you cradle babe
I spend twenty minutes steaming a dress I'm going to shove into a suitcase
and the bags under my eyes
could hold enough dresses to last me the rest of summer
Last week I taught myself
how to stop from flinching
at your ghost
Swallow the lumps you shove down my throat
wash it down with whiskey
My therapist called me last night
She said "it was out of protocol"
"I don't want to be invasive because enough people in your life already are."
Do I think I'll end up with a man?
I don't know
I don't feel anything anymore
I turned myself into you
thinking only with stagnant organs
only breathing with logic
only giving a **** when I feel like it
Only grabbing and gutting
only hunting and harboring
my soul
my vessel
my streamline sailboat
a river of loneliness
man-made and full of fish to ****
I am a salmon's skeleton

Is it wrong
that I am grateful
to have an aching heart
once again?

It feels far more natural.

Black is the only color to her
She is night
Grace is her hands
Vowels, adjectives, her own language
They fire out of fingertips
We side glance
Laughter erupts
The mountains of motherhood
Cascade sisterly love
We are gold rings
She circles the best parts of my life

My wild daughter chasing her sweet son.
They hold hands
The same way we hold the harshness of world for each other

My sacred home.
Hers, a floor below
I open her door to layered acrylic paintings,
an aromatic hug of spices
We show up in
socks
slippers
smirks
She exists in all of it
Circling and wrinkle nosed smiles
We have known each other in novels and framed photos and multiple lives
Probably nine
The crazy cat lady in us abashes
To think I felt lonely
Did that ever exist?
We ever persist
As warriors embedded by fire
We hold baby and feline
Conquering flame.
This corrupt world
Has nothing. on. us.

I dug up the roots of my front yard Hawthorne
And squeezed tears out of ducts
To water soil
To nurture limbs
To bare berry
That round maroon flesh
Plucked by sparrow
Then **** out on your freshly waxed Subaru
I hope you are out of town when it happens
And it dries and crusts and mutates
And you have to scrub
And sweat
Right back into the ****
That was fostered by my sadness

I should be ecstatic
I should be breathtaking the second I walk
into the room with you
I should be full of effortless perfection and captivating laughter
I should hold you like the rare gem you are
polishing you, weightless by your worth
I should weep with sweet gratefulness over our stunning photos
and memory keepsake moments
I should be a beauty queen rolemodel
exhibiting class and coordination and intelligence
I should be ravishing in your love,
a kaleidescope of pinks and yellows and magic
I should be bathing in the taste of your devoted kiss
and sunning under your Carribean embrace
I should be a blonde hair blue eyed American dream

Instead of a
Miserable maniac that can't even write a        *******          poem.
Instead of a terrible daydreamer,
bored by the periods at the end of your sentences.      .       .
Instead of a tarnished transient seeking foolish adventure
Craving endless oceans, cliche flight humor, and saving
animals I didn't even know existed to begin with
Instead of a jaded view from every set of empty eyes
Instead of an indulgent *******
that wants more than this terribly wonderful life
that you've offered me.

I really should.

You find out
It gurgles to the surface
bubbles,
pops
You wipe your eyes
of the residue of my ghosts
The later it gets
Every face of pain begins to show
a haunting felowship

I succumb
roll around in graves of
vampire
monster
men
soils of  a strangled me

Flesh and all,
you pull me out of shallow ground
Resurrect and remind me
of the before

I sigh in your ear
Thank you,
my dear
I forgot about the her
Who is so near

I am not your accessory
a statement piece
to your spineless connections
The thousandth image-oriented festivity
That you thoughtlessly threw
Due to the boredom of your own reflection
I am not a string of pearly witty conversation that you casually bring up when you aren't capable of employing stimulation
I am not a magenta lipstick you reach to cover up your mindnumbing gossip about the neighbors indecencies
You try to duplicate me and slip your right, then your left foot into vintage leather Jimmy Choos
Oh but your archless perception of life
Doesn't quite fit your soul next to mine
Empathy was never your strong suit
Oh but a tailored cold charcoaled judgement suit--that fits just.right.
Still you try to wear me, despite discrepancies
And oh how you hate the way I mock your silhouette
I clash with your champagne clings
You try to bash me against silverware but I remain mute
"Oh but if I can't make her an accessory, I shall make her an appendage!"
Oh how Christian and courteous of you
In the same way you asked your bridesmaid to step off the alter when she came out to you on that heavenly day
You ask me to be your brothers appendage
Oppressive and aloof
Asking was always a waste of time for you
You expect.

I asked you to sleep with your feet by my head
in order to rest my fingers
but then I wanted to feel your toes
then the ligaments around your ankles,
next the pads of your heels
Then we finally
gave up
and you turned back up to me

we never did sleep that night.

Can we just be
what we need
from eachother?
I know we are both
forbidden
to one another
but what is wrong
with fulfilling
every nerves ending
with euphoria?
Society would say
otherwise.

I, a steal heroine
shielded  
by past sorrow
imprisoned by
cuffed misogyny  

Softened by you

Just. One. Palm. Holds. Face
All silver and sharpened divider
Erased
skin and tangled hair
no longer armored  
Every tear drenched pore
Effaced
I stand bare,
happily unbuckled with love

Pillars shudder at our words
Pointless,
they melt
Surrendering to
The noncompete
of your shoulders
They hold my daughter to the stars
Her head crowned in light
your hands stable small ankles
She is released too

Golden Gates moan
Great Walls invite
Cordially wait for RSVP's
Nets and hooks and barriers all succumb
to you and I
thriving as two and loving as one

We are
moon ocean currents
ancient stone arches
pink chalk on black hot asphalt
stained huckleberry fingers

We are more than love
We are the pulse
of our lives

I will never harden again

She should not be left alone.
starfish will form from her shoulders
Extremities become tentacles
each breath sprays an ink of green passion
her iris's become piranhas
her heart--a sea-like Venus flytrap
solitude will transform soul
and vertebrae is coral cuffed
her siren lips sync to fatale vocal chords
and you, poor sailor are brave enough to return
entranced, you can't help but look at what has become
of your love
Your remains
are gold skulls in sunken ships.

I breathe out
and inhale you in
sweet white oxygyn
reaching upward
through my nostrils
traveling to my depleted lungs
I drink you up
first in small scared sips
and then I'm gulping
the warm kindness
the authentic core-coating love
that I have only found one other time
in my mother's eyes
that has been there, this whole time
a devotion that demands tears
I let you own me
You wrap your tired arms around me
they've been trying for these five torn years
and you finally feel another human being
in that embrace
Your body like a blanket
covering me
finally allowed to protect me
from the harm I had created so wickedly for myself,
a *******, paralyzed in life
I surrender from all of this pain
conforming under your skin
allowing all that makes you so
incredible

"Five years," you say
and today begins
the first day our love is truly

shared.

I lay restless in your arms
like a toddler filled up on Halloween candy
I'm filled up on doubts of you
I said "I do"
and ate that too
I scarfed sadness and cynicism
but became stuffed
trying to eat up all my
hesitation for hope

Now
with swollen stomach
and a hungry heart
All I want is to purge
this lonliness digested

Our words turned into string
Soft carrot angora
I used my size 6 needles
And begged you to whisper
Up to the stars
Off up to me
Your first thoughts
When you think of the first time you slipped your fingers
Around mine
Ah. Aren't I egocentric?
Fine.
I'll go first
It was the warmth of the first sip of black coffee Monday morning
It was the roughness of falling asleep to the sun, wrapped in the grains of sand
It was the familiarity of the pale pink walls of my childhood bedroom
It was the yearning I have seen on a homesick sailor's face fantasizing of land
And it was the sound of melancholic jazz ballads

I wait for your answer

To pearl off and offer a sweater, poorly knit
To keep you warm.

There is a
Chuck Taylor black energy connecting  
Every one of my couch’s teens
But please don’t generalize a single spirit
And especially stay away from adjectives like
“angsty” and “misunderstood”
Never accuse them of such a cliché travesty
At such an age spotlighted syndrome  stage
The Sufjan Stevens song she brings in has the same yearning
That another’s canon snaps with trapped black and whites
That same shadow tangos with the forced-into-therapy-tween’s
faint scalloped smile lines
of times before, when she had not been hunting for her own identity
When she could spin around the willow
And not worry about her eyelet ******* peeking through
Then the cloud covered eighteen year old daisy
Drags amber strands across forehead while she murmers
Blame that oozes from her juvenile jawline, mirroring
The prior sweetheart that stormed out of my office at 3:00pm
Tawny strands across her wrist
And how could I ever forget the last string of fiber
Fierce and cross armed  
The last knot to the cat’s cradle of adolescent midnight string
“I know I will conquer my genetic hand”
She declares
Bubblegum harbored in fleshy cheek
Whiskers and all.

I hold sacred in my bones
The appendage I am in all of this
wide eyed need
And I let the walls absorb their sighs
Until, in awe I witness
the beauty in vulnerability  
Again

I wait for the punchline
Curtain to cinch back
This nightmare
is an Oz of affairs
Emerald streets lead to hunter green tears
Ducts never dry
My voice hitch-hikes to my gravel road pain
Thumb points back to rib cage
There is no place like home
Sharp shame
Bone bars crumble when you ignore my name
This heart never stops with ruby red ache
There is not enough air
Inhale is at stake
You cast me as the wicked witch every time
I choke on every biting mistake.
The air remains a

The Chronicle carries a Spokane story unreported

I claim fame as a first resident
Two apartments

304
603

A Chelsea hotel
Blank canvases whiskered and primed
9 months of feminine devine
one pivotal girl
Her and I
shattered misogyny
from ceiling to wall windows
a flammable mother daughter force
soaking and smiling
in the gritty face of  Spokane
2 floors below us we found our landing
a relationship meant for cinema
Single mothers
laugh and snarl and bear down
skipping hibernation
dark humored and vinyl loving
wiping our kids' noses
and our own
All the while flying above it all
two moons among a jilted sky
Always asking ourselves "why?"

The Chronicles continue..

A farm sink
Mid century modern bar stools
An oversized satirical monkey piece of art
I bought at an auction financing a blind goat
These items were all there
They all sigh
remembering when I held my breath for too long

I survived suffocation from grief
The women in my life suited up
Battled tank into biting coral
handed me their bubbling piece
I decide on oxygen over hydrogen
White over reef
These walls carried me.
Abuse tried to tell me a different story
"Notice to Vacate" was a friend of mine
603 was my muscle
She gave my daughter and I glory

A vampire tried to merchant our space
in many forms
Little did he know, we only thrive in light
I can be proud to say
I left my glorious gargoyles on my own
as soon as I knew I could protect myself
and my story.

They enter my office
and I am their landfill
They take a cozy seat
on my blue heartbroken couch
They unload all of their garbage
One by one
a banana peel of tears
an alluminum leftover
of regret
and as their tainted trash
piles to the cieling
I take it all from them
with nothing in return
I offer them a clean towel
and an uncluttered
clear hope
And I genuinely
love them for it

I will take all of your dirt
and brown disgust
you've held in bins
all these years
once a week
as long as you want
my beautiful dears

A need that twists
cabled and gripping
To be needed.
A war between
"I shouldn'ts" and "but I have tos"
Where am I in all of this?
The identity of a woman
with ten thousand strong hearts
and breaths
All of it deflated by another
Who appears to need oxygen MORE

Need need need

Kneed Kneed Kneed

until I'm contorted into a
better reflection of yourself.
Unrecognizable am I
I look like the surface of correspondence
Here I am!
Always.
I am
The soul mate
to your dreams and
descriptors and
hurt and
tears and
all that you've ever wanted to change in your life.  
And you'll swear on all that you stand for
that we are closer than anyone you've ever known
But if you were to recite one fact about me
The room would be quiet and empty.


A need to be needed.

Hello,
nice to meet you.
Who am I? Trishanna.

I'm raw launching emotion
in a rainbow world
of  flurried dreams.
I'm a manifested awareness
of the tiny details
in every individual
I come across.
So when I go to repeat my name fifteen minutes after
meeting you
I'll see your hardened eyes
your questioning buttoned brows
and your soul that's aching
for me to ask all of the questions
that I'm not supposed to ask (the real ones.)
so that you can answer
in a non-civilized
un-socially acceptable way
In hopes to experience, for five minutes
in this god-awful church room
the feeling of being alive
pulsing with originality.


What do I do for a living?
I eat up heartache
and swallow down yearning.
I soar through the clouds of my mind
a thousand miles wide
towards every fiery vice.
I write with fierce passion.
I flood with tears.
I sing to the beauty
of rarity.

I'm a student. I'm a counselor.                                           Blah. Blah. Blah.
I'm this human, waiting for
a dialogue so much richer than this.

Your name. Your occupation. Your age.
They've robbed you of what you really want to experience with an introduction.

She hits his heart all the way out
To left field
Where dandelion lies have sprouted
And mounds of ***** secrets form
She rounds first base
Smashing her cleated soul
Into each chalky fine line
Reminding her of the
Boundaries she's crossed
one too many times
She digs her heels
Into each swelled base
Inflated with promiscuity
Racing, fleeing from each opponent
With men's hearts stuffed in her polyester pockets
As she arrives to her destined home run
She doesn't feel a bit at home
Her weary body slides in
Hoping to be burried
Under the loose infield dirt
Hidden from
Hungry raging fans
And critics
Forever

Your
mug shot
stared back at me,
removing all mystery left
within the night.
I became grateful for the glowing screen
that separated your captured image
from my wide eyes.
My breath lunged back into lungs,
squeezing the walls for safety,
terrified of battling
the thick air
in the room
where I held your photo.

Your lips thin and
braced,
as if you were holding
your hell
in the muscles of your jaw.
They were grey and tight
like the rest of your skin
stretched across your foreign face.
Your eyes,
sunken
as if you were already a skeleton.
Death peaking through in physical life.
I could barely peer into your pupils
for longer than a fraction of a second
without looking away.
Your gaze cold,
seeping with chemicals,
reflecting a glassy turmoil.
The features of your face
were no longer present
the way they used to be when
I was a little girl.
It's as if time
washed the details of you
away.

A rainy sorrow
I used to get caught in.
Until realizing the dryness
of non-existence.

The only deciphering factor
that lead me to believe
that it was really you
Staring back at me
was the way your part
forced your blonde hair
to wave
around your face
and collapse at your cheeks

The way mine does.

You deep sea dive inside the ocean of me
and man-make a continent sized drain,
positioned  
next to a family of oysters on my ocean floor
Mother, father, brother--you drain my whole life of pearls
A sea-leech who slithers secretly
into deeper waters
You do not belong here.
A cobalt vulture, snagging the empath of my soul
that mistakes air for kindness

I won't tell you
when I arrive "in town"
I'll lurk among the streets
that hold your name
in the pocket of their sidewalks
I'll crawl among the bars
that snicker with gross amusement
while I drown in ***** irony
I'll kick out the color
of the fallen leaves
That I fell with last week
for you
at the foot of your fashion-forward boots
I'll hug on strangers
that have that same
curled smile
and sad one-note expression
that you do
and I'll dance until every pore
is rid of the memory of your touch
and I'll swig every stout
until my thoughts can't even grasp
the memory of your name.

Two weeks ago you said,
"We went through the wringer"
Five words
like sumo wrestlers
sit, legs open
comfortable on my chest

Three "best friends"                     Australia                           ­             me

When did it begin?


When I was pushed up against a wall in some basement bar
And he spit at me, "****" "*****" "Worthless *******"?
Shoved so hard that strangers

Had to "go through the wringer"

I walked home alone that night

You were not who I called.

Or was it when I was stalked and threatened
And then showered with adoration and the love (lip service) I never received from the man who is responsible for my birth

Was it then, that you felt like you had to go through the wringer?

You were not who I called.

Could it have been when I was forced to **** his ****?
Was that when you were "going through the wringer"

You were not who I called.

Or was it when he let himself into my apartment
And I ****** myself when I opened the door
He was eating my food standing over me

You were not who I called.

I think I know when it was

It was when he showed up to my work
When he threatened me
Then left the most eloquent love letter at my doorstep
Told me he loved me and would do anything to make it right
And tried to punch my childhood best friend's boyfriend in the face

What a"wringer" to go through

You were not who I called.

I am confused.

What wringer were you going through?

Because you were not who I called.

I'm in a state of constant rebellion
I boycott your love
and protest the war
That rests within my
guarded core
I'm in utter revolt
I thought I was enraged at the world
And the oppression it has cast on me
A silly blonde girl
such as I
I'm only at odds
with the self.
I've been advocating
Justice
Rooted in feminism
Responding only in fight and flight and freeze
and fury
Anything that
will help me
boldly wear
my riot gear.
I'm in incessant mutiny
and scrutiny
and, oh, just to be
defenseless.
I would give anything
to turn soft
for
you.

Should I blame my father?
Is that who is at fault?
A man with a salty cobalt smile
A felon, turned male siren
Bringing every oak fortress
to her shipwrecking death
The wind, never able to drown out
Every sailor weeping, "How did we not know???"
If only we could remain children forever
blaming our parents and dissolving our sins from theirs
I want him to be in the court house
I want him to sign my name with a blue ink pen
I want him to paint midnight  on my eyelids
the way he did my mother's
I want to swallow every lump in my throat and purge it onto him
I hope he never washes the stains from his collar bone
Maybe then he could beat the yellow out of me
instead of her
Yellow
Blue
Black
The way the sun seems to set
But our generation of women have never been settled

How did I not know.

How did I not know.

That your smile would be my pearly gate to hell
That your ***** would produce my God--
The most gorgeous curly headed goddess to ever step foot on this planet
You will try to take her from me
I will never let you
You will try to stain her iris from blue to green
Her sapphire spirit will never be boxed by you
She will be the fortress that you cannot take down
Like a mine field
She will blow you up and I will collect the bones
You will starve me for years
I will fast even longer
I am her mother.

I bathe myself in preparation
Suds of lavender & honey
lathered over my smooth summer skin
I even shave
just for you
Moroccan oil pours over my scalp
exfoliating extra well behind the ears
ah the ears
my favorite spot
Gently dry off
Making sure not to miss any spots
above the knee
where usually a stubble island lingers
make sure the *******
are like starfruit
ready for your suckling
Lather cocoa butter
on elbows and around neckline
sensual, a paradise for you
My argan oil tresses, your palm trees
drown lashes in bat black
curl them upward towards cloudy head
I pinch already flushed cheeks
nice and baby doll pink, just the way you like it
All the while staining lips vamp scarlet
so that you may think their sole purpose
on my face is for
circling around your ****
I tweeze brows into crescent moons
over a Bette Davis eye sky
And I won't dare forget to bleach each pearly tooth
picket fence white
So when I flash my counterfeit grin
a twinkle may appear
and blur the emptiness
lurking between both corners
Now for the *****, bra pairing
of course midnight lace and twin
You, my dear get to unwrap this body of mine
How will you choose what to unravel first?
******* or ****?
Decisions. Decisions.
All of it for your
heartbreaking ***** machismo

I arrive,
just as those perfect hands
of your clock
strike the moment you wanted them to
You dine
licking your fingers after each dish
You breathe cigarette breathe
Your pungent odor wreaks over my body
as yours climbs aboard
Hair, greasy hamburger follicles
Skin, porous with choking chemicals
And there is nothing to unwrap
nothing for me to find
Except an empty chest
The gold had been in my pockets the whole time
I must bathe you off.

Should I dig up the roots and expose all that has brought my limbs to stretch towards the sky?
Or should I shave the bark to bare fleshy wet rings?
Naked to every year that has brought me to where I am now?

Small clenched fists
Dukes up
Resistant and Rioting against smiling in pictures and diamonds and last names and flaky white dresses and those ******* five senses that flood memories
They knock on the door of my hearts sinking ship
There are lifeboats I don't board
on purpose
As if being a martyr could take back all the wrong I've done to you

Should I press my veiny leaves on wax paper?
So you can preserve the road maps of my pain
And changing colors
With every season
So that I never crunch under foot and mold among the purity of the first snowfall

Should I offer you sips of my sap?
Poisoned with placating people and pretending to be okay
What a sour sticky substance
No, that will not do

Alas, I will offer you my soil  
Dig your fingers into the minerals
Into grainy brown slivers
This is where I have been quenched by the relatable tears of my clients
And fertilized by dear friends

Is that enough?

I'm reckless
and wounded
and the most horrible part of it
all
is that I'm completely
unapologetic
about the raised
scars
I've created
in your mind.

I've been missing
authentic selflessness
devoted kindness
and the soft laughter
you let out
when I used to do things
like try to cheer you up

I've been missing
fiery conversations
deep and vibrant
they used to dance across my face
every time I had a stollen space
alone
with your voice

I've been missing
grace within strangers
the signs of simplicity in nature
The way you'd stuff me into your
envelope embrace
and those hearty compliments
that  I used to save up for calloused
malnourished days

I miss
you impressing my brother
with your dutifulness
and natural peace,
showing big bright flecks of acceptance
in your eyes

I miss
the lightness I would feel
the second I pulled into our parking lot
and saw your muddy shoes outside
our place

I miss
noticing the yellow parts of the day
brought by your soothing spontaneity

I miss
laying my wild heart down at night
and being able to close my eyes
without wasp anxiety
stinging the lining of my stomach

I miss sleep and
the way I used to be with you.
Pure     beautiful     lovely                and utterly unique

It didn't happen all at once
But it was an immediate awareness
A feeling rather
Is it an ending of something?
Or a beginning?
Or the sudden drop of the ******
Within my story
Just trembling and ready to head uphill again
Because my novel knows me too well
And so do the stars
A pro climactic rising
Is always around the corner
No it was more like an opening and closing
Or a cutting off of rotted midnight limb
And in its place a blossoming rainforest full of the woodland emotions that look a lot like
Furry clashing forces
I'm not quite sure how to describe it but
All I know is that I rescued myself
From me
And here I am
A floating thriving body on glass water
An ebb that quenches my pores Tiger fish that offer their scales for comfort
And algae that looks a little like sparkly mold from the moon
And the air I breath as I float is crystalline
salty renewal
And that saltwater taffy smirk of mine
Is real
Chew it between perspectives
The diamonds in my eyes
Have been authenticated
Go ahead and sell them at full price

The all of me is a desert
Cracking at the surface
You withhold water
from your hands,
the skin is curling up
into greedy wrinkles
Seeds struggle underneath my lips
They could burst through
if you would just

Lip skin synthesizes to a foaming mouth
Gritty
Rabie white
an open popsicle "ahhhh" tongue
Exposed a warm animal within
A savage
I cannot be a crowned blonde princess anymore                   neck
Fangs.                                                            of
Foreign vessels                           out
                            
                                     launch
                                        
I am a bomb.

Pull rubber grip with molars
I will blast away your DNA
so you never
ever
ever
existed

I have floated above myself before
A blank faced sheet,  a fractured mirror
Self looking down on distant self
A Charlie, pushing arches against bubble fans
Burping up desperation
Grasping to be grounded

This morning the derealization was different

Winged above I saw myself in a dream
Grown up me
As I had idealized  
as a crimson heart-eyed child

Standing
in a cluttered room
Wrapped in silk, held in your wings
You tickling me, pushing nose into nape
It had finally happened
The first view
of the best version of myself
Unlike nothing else.

If I swallow my heart whole
Will aorta pulse as it twists through esophagus?
Down Small Intestine,
Down to Large Intestine too?
If it does not
and my heart was not all I believed it to be
Attest for me.
Tell them how I would hold my breath underwater
and dive down to the quiet of the ocean.
How I would trace my finger along  
a grainy gold carpet
Mapping out thousands of
Portraits.
Portraits my heart will never. stop. digesting. of. you.
For anyone who asks
In this desperate life about you, unlucky lover
Who ends up with me.
How the story ends with I end up purging back

"Just Intermission. Be safe. Be kind."
Our sunset view for 18 months
My home is made up of windows
and I don't want anyone handing me a stone
There are exactly  3 crosses around me and a 20 foot lit up Mary holding a baby Jesus I see when I look out my southside window
I get an email stating that they will be birthing