Today can be a good day
Most people are good
There is ice cream in the freezer
You have your entire life to do everything you want
You can join a folk band later
You can be the person you are and want to be
You can watch all the beautiful movies ever made
You can read all the best books
You can take hot bubble baths and drink tea
You can ferment and can and make jam for the rest of your life
One day, you will have the time and dedication for a successful garden
You will make an impact on the people that let you
You can take moments and choose to be positive
You can grow an herb garden
You can watch funny videos when you’re sad
You can make pottery and jewelry
You can knit and cross stitch and weave
You can remember all the good things and the bad things and remember that these things made you, you
It’s okay to not like the things you have to do. Sometimes you still have to do them, sometimes you don’t
You can go get coffee and dinner with your mother
You can make your entire life beautiful
Even the bad stuff can be beautiful too
You can write for the rest of your life
You can read for the rest of your life
You can learn, learn, learn
You can love and love more and love more and more and more
You can eat new things all the time
You can use nice pens in nice journals
You can be somebody that you’re proud of

They found you in the night

dressed in bloodstain

swathed in gauze, cotton, taffeta

a white shelter

doused with brown, pink

the hues of our veins.

I never forgave him.

Further we drop

fruitless I whisper

The leaves hang in the balance, and drop

sure as the snow that might never come,

sure as the electricity which might never run

and blizzards are fun if you’ve never been in one;

I guess.

      —

So I am waiting for the grey area to dissipate and (separate)

because feeling one way or the other half the time doesn’t

help,

about anything.

Does that make

sense?

    —

Shelter my ****,

forgive my own self-loathing,

love like there’s nothing we’d rather do

(it’s true)

please only

be

and i will try

to be

as well,

(do you understand?)

    —

This mismatched magnet love words

tongue-strung-together

and with glue and

string,

and piece me back together like that puzzle

I told everyone I was when I was

12.

—

All those missing pieces, how

they

bite and blister,

glisten and glitter,

slither through cracks where I don’t expect to find them,

I am hoping for the black-and-white-life.

(It won’t, doesn’t exist.)

(There are

too many shadows,

and the time does tick

I guess.)

I guess I am waiting for an answer that I cannot find,

I question I don’t even know how to ask.

    —

Remember, remember,

in the stupor, in the wondrous

days of wasting away,

remember those were not the good days.

People live to find themselves whole,

and you tried to

disappear,

and how lovely and lonely

that never should have been,

and still never was.

Crashing

into something,

always

Mania like a ******* *****

I am biting my knees

and my head is racing

like a shooting star that nobody wishes on,

and I think I’m going to throw up

and I’ve had a head ache all day

so I got dolled up and reek of smoke, smoke, smoke

and I’ve got this tic where I pick pick pick

at my skin like clockwork

like you hear about **** users doing,

and my grandmother’s neighbor’s **** lab got busted

but that has nothing to do with this.

Can’t tell if I’m sick

or sick of this

felt myself writing my eulogy in my head when I got home,

felt myself running running running

and talking too weird and falling over

and I’m not even drunk

and I’m not even close.

I need to calm down but this mania has me ******* petrified, sick sick sick.

And I know I’m not eating enough and I’m smoking too much and

what I want is my mother, in that summer camp kinda way

where you need somebody to rub your back and coo

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay”

over and over again, letting your sobbing puddle into her lap,

like that time I tried to come out to her

for hours.

In 3rd grade my best friend asked me why my fingers were all sorts of cut up

and I told her, “Oh, you know, farm life” and changed the subject because the sound of the word “picking” makes my body curl up

and two years another girl asked me why my fingertips were purple

and I didn’t tell her it was because I didn’t know how to stop.

I need to run

not away or from something, just run

to catch up with my head

to catch up with my body, shaking shaking on this seat.

This is the one of the worst poems I’ve ever written but I think it’s

probably the most honest

because I am sometimes so scared to be alive,

and so scared to be human.

On an unrelated note, if I tell you I am queer,

I’m not looking for your opinion.

On an unrelated note, last night a girl prayed on her knees for me,

years ago I went to a church where they spoke in tongues over my head as I felt my knees buckle and I cried then, too.

When your only lived experiences are biased with depression, are haunted,

are counting your calories and

praying that something can save you,

and thinking that only you can save yourself, I’m thinking maybe I need something more.

I teach preschoolers almost every week about what it means to be a Christian, what the foundation of the Bible is but

I’m definitely not a Christian, because somewhere along the line, I lost that too.

Maybe I am as arrogant as my first job fired me for being,

maybe I am as ******* human as I’ve always tried to avoid

or something.

I think it is gone now, that stretching thin

that mania

of too much thought racing

train blaring

I’m sick, sick, sick.

There was a girl and she knew when I was upset because I spoke in threes,

in triples,

like I’m begging for that holy trinity,

like I’m shining a flash light at the stars,

calling in Morse code for the night to lift

for the gods to call me up,

like I’m begging for You.

If God knows everything,

does he read this too?

Today she told me she made it through every

try out round for

America’s Next Top Model and when

she went home to tell her girlfriend that she made it on the show,

she got her face beat in so bad, Miss Jay didn’t even

recognize her the next day.

She wasn’t on the show.

——

Today is roses,

wilted petals,

flowers from I-don’t-know-where

that have landed in our bathroom,

have sunk themselves in an empty bottle of ***,

two handles on the side,

the better to smell them with.

——

Today I am covered in a museum collection of

bug bites and lumps and

scratches and bruises

and leg rashes

and I don’t know where anything has come from,

not even

me.

——

Today he asked me how the poetry is coming.

I said it is slow.

——

Today I wanted to kiss a boy because it was his birthday,

and I don’t think he’s ever kissed a girl before,

and I think he should

if he wants to

on his birthday.

——

Maybe I will tomorrow.

——

Today has barely begun, is three hours in

was 6 minutes too late to buy

gas station beer

but we bought two cigarillos

and on the drive back,

talked to three kids who had just seen a UFO.

I missed it.

——

Today he threw a tomato at my face,

and it slid off and landed on the floor with a splat as I screamed.

There were customers.

——

Today I had to explain why I keep

leaving people.

I have to be alone, I said.

——

Today I dressed for myself.

Thank God.

——

Today I listened to country music and covered my ears

because they hurt but also it hurt

to not listen to it with my Dad in the truck, driving

anywhere

but today I picked a boy up and taught him how to swing me around

and he picked me up and spun me in his arms and

I think that’s how you do country.

——

Today my cis, male, white, Mormon, wait-till-marriage-to-have-*** English teacher

talked about **** shaming

and the patriarchy

and he gets it

and thank God.

——

She is auditioning to model, again.

There is no one to take her face away.

Johnny speaks moon.

Johnny sells newspapers,

Johnny eats stars for late-midnight snacks,

fills his stomach

     with something dead, or about to be.

You’ve heard about the light,

you’ve heard, right?

It is dead by the time it reaches us.

Johnny speaks moon,

Johnny lives in his arms,

creates constellations out of freckles,

takes pictures of arms next to arms next to arms

where he makes the universe.

Ours.

Connects the moles, bruises, birthmarks, stars

stars.

Johnny speaks moon.

Johnny shells out pennies for old pens, talks to gas station clerks about

    string theory

then buys string

as a joke.

Johnny speaks moon,

seeks God in empty white mugs,

sells newspapers.

Because

                                this is what we’ve become,

but Johnny speaks moon

and laughs.

****** up your dissonance,

(your discontent, your dissent,)

hold it to your breast like a child,

hold your truth to be

(self-evident)

though they will ignore it.

Your passivity is here, some

days and they will mock you.

Let it be,

let yourself stand for that ultimate,

for that good

that you know is riddled with

the newsworthy “bad intentions” or

“ungodliness.”

Shelter your cooing,

let the body see, let the people see

humanity

as it is

will care for what it can.

Some have hearts as vast as oceans.

Some hold all of space.

Others carry with them a tiny ceramic vessel,

or the eye of a needle,

or a small brass bowl.

They can only love

so much.

Carry the weight, if it matters.

Carry that ****, that ****, that bristling anger.

Snake it where it matters.

Show them.

You don’t have to forgive them,

(maybe you should)

but

show them.