I walked into Walgreen’s that night
              absorbed in my own little world.

Soon after entering,
I made my way to the line.
My eyes
             d       a      n  c  e d        

to the crescent-moon shaped scar
    adorning the young clerk’s neck.

With the gentleman in front of me,
he spoke of
camouflage and machine guns.
                                                                            Earlier times when he
                                                                               could only see his
                                                                                  family through
                                                                                     the lens of
                                                                                            a
                                                                                      webcam.
When  he first learned what it took
                                       to be a man.

And when he learned what true loss
really felt like.

It’s my turn.
I step     f      o   r w ard
and stare directly into his eyes
and wonder

how he ended up here.


His face doesn’t give away much,
he’s painted on a cordial smile
and the air between us seeps
with the remnants
of small talk.

But I can’t help wondering.
I wonder, if he knows

he’s more than he’s been told.
       more than he’s settled for.
       more than the orders he was commanded to obey.
       more than the lines he was expected to cross.
       more than the monster he had to become.
                                                                                   To survive.

I can’t help but wonder

how he’s ended up here.

Overseas— he’s ranked
but now that he’s home
on friendly soil,                                    he’s thrown into department store
                                                                 positions and temporary jobs.
I can only hope he’s better off than some of his friends

tossed into
psychiatrists offices.

But I wonder,
I wonder what memories might decide to plague his dreams.
While he tries to figure out
which pill alleviates which painful recollection.
Which part of his past will come back to haunt him today
and which of his friends lives will flash before his eyes while he tries to sleep.

Norepinephrine firing through his brain
                                 like the gunshots he had to deliver.

The U.S government is so quick to draft,

but hasn’t learned how to welcome home.

They hide their veterans in the dark corners of psych wards,

allow them to get lost in the depths of their own minds,

while the PTSD
                                   eats away whatever is left.

These men fight for countries who don’t know what to do with them afterwards.
What they both need to learn:

There is life after war.

The bass was here.

I remember
late nights,
phone pressed against my cheek.
Your whispers lit my soul and I awoke.
I saw myself in your smile,
heard my voice in your heartbeat—

but found the strength on my own.
I needed to believe you.
You liked being needed.

But here I am,
digging up flowers
amidst headstones— I couldn’t let this rest.

But there you are,
a wandering tourist just looking for a home.
And I, a speed bump.
You tripped—
while trying to catch the Sun.

I’m sorry my attractions weren’t worth capturing.
You were too scared to use the camera slung around your neck—
what if you dropped it?
Well, it broke anyway.

I gave you too long to be honest & overstayed my welcome.

The bass was here.

We live in different worlds, but found each other in our past.
You liked Woodrow Wilson,
                                                             I should have known it wouldn’t work out.
I found myself in poetry
                                              

                               you taught me that.
Couldn’t you see I was new at this?

You didn’t want to repeat history—

you never gave me a chance.

Time tables turned— turn tables over time.
You twisted your essence to fit my definition—
                                                               you

                                                               loved
                                                            

                                                                how

                                                                 this

                                                                 felt.
To finally be on the other side.

The bass was here.

Your lies became the music I danced to, alone in my room
I loved how we sounded together.
But I never listened to the lyrics
space,

                                     time,


less.
The bass was here.
I didn’t mean to make you leave.
The base was here.
You
were
here.

Word is bond, but your words
left me bonded. Blinded.
Like my horoscope— I used to believe in you.

[Hi(s]tory) changed when the planets aligned and she became
i
l
   l
     u
       m
          i
            n
              a
                t
                  e
                    d.
His home.


History still repeats for me.

Distance played a part in this equation—
       you never let yourself get close.

But you got close enough to save me.

The bass was is here.
It just sounds different now.

The bass makes me weak.

                                      All I knew
                         was that I wanted to know
                                 e v e r y t h i n g

                   about you.

Caress the inner corners of your mind, with mine.

Hold your hand
               as if to learn
                      something new
                                        about myself.

Second period— I only knew what I had heard—

you smiled, eyes twinkled, brown met blue.

Never had I been so grateful for assigned seating.

                                                       ­                               You never
                                                           ­                              would have chosen
                                                                                                                                     me.

Our whispers became muddled by “shhs”
as others tried to hear the teacher
over our l a u g h t e r

this was my favorite part of                                              us.

But here I am
                   in over my head,
out of my league.

I can’t remember ever not wanting

                                                        ­                        you.

But there you are,
                    sharing your heart with her.

I thought that year would never end.


I never left your side.
We talked every night.
I hope you don’t  mind,

                      I

f
   e
   l
l

                     for you.

I’m sorry I’m so inconvenient.
I tried to be what you needed.
You only wanted a close friend.

They say,
that a girl and a guy cannot stay friends because one will eventually fall for the other.

“Eventually” came quick with you.


The bass makes me weak.

You were the
f
i
r
s
to break down
           the walls
                         I cowered behind.
unclog the arteries
                                                       of my
                                                   w i l l
                                           and
                                   beg me into
                                   e
                                    i
                         ­          n
                                   g
You tricked me into believing I was worth knowing.

We fit like two words in a crossword puzzle—

not obvious at first but it makes sense in the end.

You know me better than I know myself.
                     I have dreams
                                                          ­                         that play
                                                            ­                hopscotch
                                       ­                         on the corners of my mouth,
                                                          ­                  when they see you

they float.

                                                         ­           when you smile

they fly kites.

The bass makes me weak.

I almost lost you, twice.
Due to
           tripped up tongues,
                              too much waiting,
                                                & “friends.”


You can’t use that you never knew as an excuse.

The bass makes me weak.
You never even gave me a chance.
The bass makes me weak.
You
make
me.

the distance between you and I was
                          the distance of our proximity to
                          our emotions—

                                       I was too close.

You fall for girls who don’t want you

I’ve convinced myself that’s why you haven’t fallen for me.

Before the time when things went wrong. Before the time we knew things could go this wrong. Before the initial hook, before the rescue, before the remission. Before the loss and before the pain. Before the creation of such a substance. Before the need for such a substance. Before, substance. Before the lost memories, the funeral. Before the hospital sirens and before the need for hospital sirens. Before mortality, immortality, and the strive for either. Before dependency. Before the time of wanting to stop. Before the time of needing to stop. Before being strong was not enough. Before the break, the collapse, the relapse. Before the prayer for redemption. Before the need for redemption. Before redemption.

Before it was too late.

I wonder what everyone else was feeling
                         when you were rushed to the hospital.

Again.

Eyes rolled,
mouths scoffed,
                      unsurprised.

Like the only place it made sense for you to be was
locked up
                                                  or six feet under.

I managed to stitch together the fragmented sentences
I had heard
and fill the spaces in between
with what I could infer.
Two sole letters
reverberated off the cave walls of my mind:

OD,
                                OD,
               OD.

An anthem I fell asleep to where I dreamed of a bedroom

for remission to make love to your addictions.

Those two letters became five before I could grasp the finality.

D
                          E
             A

                 T


H.

I was shattered.
The pieces of myself,
I’ve retrieved off the floor
and put them together in the puzzle of my life
where I have no place for drugs to fit.

I think about you more often than anyone is willing to believe.
When you took your first sip of alcohol,
                        a mixed drink of
     one part peer pressure
                          and another part curiosity,

        did you know you’d end up drinking your life away?

Driving and drinking don’t go together-
but maybe no one ever told you that.

But soon, it wasn’t enough.

You felt the need to get high to get through the day,
but did you hear your life start to break and our hearts along with it?

You always had a ‘go big or go home’ mentality,
I just wish you hadn’t applied it to drugs.


“Drugs don’t ****” has become the war cry.

I know.

They do so much more than that.
       They rip families apart
       steal honor from fathers,
        children from mothers,
        and life from anyone.

You huff and you puff and soon you become
       the big bad wolf who brings
              the house d
                               o
                               w
                               n

I still hold you in the highest respect
and I can’t make that point clear enough.

You never stopped fighting.


That monkey on your back didn’t live an easy life.

Her name is Tiffany.

We met when

our orbits collided

                                  and crash landed,

on a wooden picnic table

                       in the dead of night.

I saw the world in her eyes—

and she had this spirit about her
       that made me want to follow
                her with an umbrella
                       the rest of my days
                             so she wouldn’t
                                    even be
                                      bothered
                                                by the rain.

I swore, I’d make her believe in                        h u m a n i t y.

Conversation, spit-balled from her lips like a machine gun

trigger stuck—

we tore through topics

                    like bullets tear through skin,

I tried my best to keep up.

We dead ended on the subject of children.
She grew silent, pale.

                      “I should be the mother of twins” she stammered.

I’ve been told I have quite the poker face, but in that moment

                                                                               I know she saw.

Turning her head as if to answer my unspoken question

“Miscarriage”
                        she breathed.

I spent the next however long soaking in her story, like a sponge.
I could tell,
                               she doesn’t do this often.

I have no respect for fathers who stain the honor of father
with a ******'s blood.

For boyfriends who can’t hear the word “No.”

over the sound of their
                                          d e s i r e.

These men painted her the color of smashed hymens.

On her wedding night,

she won’t forget.

She can’t give                                            what’s been stolen.

She finishes.
I exhale—breaking the silence first.

She looks at me, with all the innocence they must have stolen from her,

and i wonder

if she can

hear me

b r e a k


This, is the kind of story you read about.

I had no words to fix her— I couldn’t fix her.

All I knew was I wanted to sear my flesh and

m
   e
       l
         t

into the crevices of her broken self

and convince her

It will be okay.

“I swear, I’ll make you believe in
**h u m a n i t y.”

I am from paradise

which never failed to include rainy, cold summers

and heatstroke winters.

Where mountain ranges were as small as pebbles,

and pebbles,

were only meant for skipping.

I am from that spot in the sunset

where the

rustic oranges meet up with the rolling blues of the ocean

and have coffee.

Where endless meets infinity

and everyone wears ugly Christmas sweaters.

I am from where Harriet Tubman

and Nat Turner type dreams take root.

Where black and white meet to make purple,

green, and everything in between.

I am from where dreams fly

and people never stop laughing.

From two way conversations with strangers

and love letters instead of obituaries.

I am from here.

They tell me, I don’t know what pain feels like.
Because of the color of my skin
and the numbers that roll in on my daddy’s paycheck—
                                                                                         I must not know what pain feels like.

Any maybe that’s true
but then again,
maybe it’s not.
Cause things—
                                                              they’re rough all over.

I come home and my heart rips apart
when I see my mother’s broken heart
has finally escaped from her eyes in the form of tears.
Because she only has three fifths of her senses
so she’s different,
                       not normal,
damaged.

But enough of the Helen Keller jokes.
To you, she’s just some dead lady with a
problem with her eyes or ears or something
but to me, I see part of Helen Keller in my mother.

She was born with Usher’s Syndrome.
One part hearing loss,
                                 one part vision loss.
She had her first pair of hearing aids by the time she was five
and by the time she was thirty—
she realized there was something wrong with her eyes, too.

There’s nothing more we can do for you,
doctors urged.
Filling her with empty promises and false hope
with every,
“Maybe it won’t get any worse.”

We know now, that’s not the case.
They’ve put an expiration date on her vision
five years,
ten if we’re lucky.
But still my mother remains unbroken.
I mean she has her bad days, but most of them are good.
That’s why my definition of strong,
begins with the word “Mom.”

But no Mom, you’re not alone.
At every 11:11 I wish for it all to go away
or at least slow down so you have a chance to catch up.

I utter midnight prayers,
face decorated in the light cast off from my alarm clock
whispering I plead
“Dear God, what did she do wrong?”
But I’m not angry anymore and I don’t blame Him.
I know she of all people, can handle it.
But if it were me
I would have cracked years ago.

But if the day is to come,
blind due to genetic defect,
I’ll be here.
I’ll proudly grab her hand in public,
just to give her walking stick a rest.
I’ll be the guide dog she hopes she never needs.
I’ll take her hands and help her trace out the
outlines of every sight she never got to see
but really wanted to.
I’ll put her palms over the heartbeat of the grandchild
she may never have the pleasure of seeing.
I’ll spend forever divulging every detail of my loving husbands face
she may never have meet.
I won’t let her miss out.

And on those days where it’s too much to handle,
I’ll be the whisper—
smooth like the wind, delicate like honey.
“Don’t give up, you’ve made it this far.
Plus you look really old, you don’t want to see that anyway.”

If I’m being honest,
whenever we speak and you let truth
breeze through your pursed lips

you
move
me.

Move me like an earthquake rumbles the earth
when it dares show off its beauty.

Speaking with you is like reading a book backwards
there is no need for exposition—
i hear my smile in your rustic voice,
and if I ever traced my pale fingers
along the maps of your mind
it’d feel like
home.

I’ll be your resolution.

I want to write love letters
d
o
w
n
your arms
so you’ll finally learn the truth about yourself.
Paint your future on the inside of your eyelids
so when you close your eyes, searching your soul
for something worth living for
you’ll be reminded
not to hate yourself so much.

Every sigh your battered spirit releases
I promise, I will swallow it whole.
Let it dissolve in the pits of my stomach
and call my soul now to stand.
I want to keep you close.
                                        Come closer.

You
You’re an internal conflict
just waiting to erupt.
Fire and water
drop in your gut
like Armageddon.
You are too big
for your own skin.
u
  n
   w
    r
  a
v
e
l

it is beautiful to overcome
in a world where
struggle is just a synonym for
weakness.
Be solemn in a world that
has forgotten how to value silence.

You hide behind abstraction
but i see you come alive
on stage.
you just want someone
to stick around long enough.

I aim to bring you from behind
the walls you cower,
tell you that
you are the most beautiful
combination of DNA
if only I could arrange the
twenty six characters of the alphabet
to do you justice.

You just want someone to figure you out.
Don’t give up hope.

I’m desperately trying to.

I stepped into the shower after taking the agonizing minutes to remove my baggy clothes, knit with my self-esteem, from my cryptic body.

I shivered as the ice caps of my swollen heart flexed.

As the water danced about my body, I felt you.

If I opened my mind, squinted my eyes, and cocked my head forty-five degrees to the right

I could convince myself it really was you.

The water trickled over the places you’d tickle your fingers.

Rained on my face where you used to spontaneously plant your kisses.

I clenched my eyes tight- I can’t bear to lose this moment.

My corpse of a heart was ignited by the heat of the water

and the thought of you.

I breathed in your memory and it flooded my cerebral cortex.

Sensory overdrive.

Soon, my shower ended and I begrudgingly stepped onto the linoleum floor.

When I dare steal a glance at my somber reflection, I felt the iciness coming back.

My heart hardened.

You taught me how to love myself.

Now look at me.

Every time I look around Sedona, Arizona
I cannot deny the existence of God.
He's helped me see the beauty in everything
& I think that is what I adore most about Him.

I see it in how the sun stretches its fingers
into every nook and cranny
the mountains try to hide.

I bet even the mountains
feel alive within the warmth
of the sun's grasp.

I hear it in the tiny pebbles rolling
downstream or down crevices
to new homes.

I see it in new beginnings.

I think I'd like to get married in Sedona
because it's the first place I've ever fallen in love with.
And the only place I still believe in beauty.
In simplicity and purity.
And in forgiveness.

It's the only place I can go to find myself
and when I sit within the valley
of two red rocked mountains
that could pass as monuments,
I feel closest to God.

And whether that is because I feel like
I'm nestled between the powerful palms
of an endearing God
or because whenever I see the sun
reflect off those red washed walls
I realize God didn't just paint these rocks for me,
they are his masterpieces as well.
Where he too can seek refuge when the rest
of the world gets a little stormy.

It is in Sedona, Arizona (population 10,000)
where I realize
I truly am made in God's image.

I spent the morning tossing a Frisbee, and my worries along with it.

I soon found myself swinging to the sound of

forgetfulness and nostalgia.

My childhood memories danced at my feet,

but with out stretched arms,

only my fingertips graced their excellence.

The touch sent the memories of crawdad fishing and tree forts

tingling up my spine.

The me I used to be

boiled in my blood.

When wet grass and free time were enough.

When I wore scrapped elbows as jewelry and the fresh wood scent

decorated my body as perfume.

Back when my dog was my best friend and I had yet to realize

that wasn’t okay.

“Ignorance is bliss,” they chime.

I know.

I don’t want bliss. I want life. Brutally beautiful, if you let it.

There’s a girl.
She lives somewhere between Dayton
and the rusty, old tracks of Georgia.
Lips like cinnamon, hips like sugar.
She smells like October but shines like summer.

But underneath,
she’s calloused and bruised.
Surviving off an *****
that only pumps blue,
matching the hues of her arms.
You can read them like a book,
                                          they tell her story.

Her tears could fill the empty
keg her cheating boyfriend drinks from,
as she cries her galactic eyes to sleep.

She awakes, breathes easy,
but stays.

As if to prove she has heart, by letting him break it.
As if to prove he loves her, by letting him break her.

I’m in love with the memory of you.
We tap dance on the neural connections that connect my brain,
to my soul.
Tapity- tap- tap.
But only on those hot summer nights.

You kisses taste like moonshine
and your arms in mine, make music.
Tapity-tap-tap.

I fell for you where
brown eyes met blue.

Where
first date dinners
met
third date kisses.

Where camouflage and bullets
met
pearls and lipstick.

Where moon-lit dances
met
tear stained airports.

And where friendly fire, met you.

I got that tapity-tap-tap on my door,
I fell to the floor
and now here I am, tapity-tap-tapin’ my shoes
tryin’ to get back to you.

But death marches to its own beat,
tapity-tap-tap

If there is reincarnation,
I’m jealous other people get to
have you in their lives,
and I don’t anymore.

My heartbeat echoes, tapity…

tap…

…tap.

Tapity….

tap…

tap.

This is not a poem
                          a legend,
                                            or myth.

This is my story.
       This is my rescue.
This is my redemption.

This is a young girl who
wore her shame like chains

                                      it never set her free.

Tugging at her clothes
trying to get the tightness to stop mocking her.

Wanting to be any body but herself,
be in any body but her own.

She wore approval like static electricity,
                 she always c
                                   l
                                 u
                                   n
                                  g
                                        to it.

Even if it never came.

She’d scrawl the words

SOME DAY

in black ink down her arms

so when the other kid’s words
       caused her to hang her head
               she’d look down and remember

some day is one day closer.
some day is just one day closer.

She learned to carry herself like a flagpole,
                                                   it’s all she had out there.

Until she met Him.
He who canoed about her arteries and
wrote books about the things she couldn’t see in herself.

He who gave her someday, everyday.

Who showed her how to break the chains of shame.

Who told her the reason her clothes might feel a little too
tight, was because they couldn’t stand to be too far away from her.

She stopped hearing others insults and only felt His love.

His name?

His name is Jesus.

He saved me from myself.

I think we poets know best
that these words inside of us
can either be
anchors
or they can be life vests.

Choose wisely.

Someone else’s life could depend on it.

Her hips align with the setting sun,
as outstretched arms dance above her head.

She sways, trying to get lost
in the movement of time.

The rhythm beats, as her heart breathes.
This is all she knows.
This is all she has left.

She dances to remember.
She dances so they won't forget.
This is all they have left.

I want to be your definition of amazing.
I want to move you like earth quakes rumble the Earth
when they dare show off their beauty.
I want to make you question everything yet bring you clarity, all at the same time.
I want to get to know you.
The you that you’re free to be when you’re alone.
I want us to be like the eye of a hurricane because even in this whirlwind of life,
                                                                    we’ll make beauty.
I want to have the privilege of growing old with you and the honor of calling you mine.
I want you to shatter every belief I’ve ever held
                                              and help me pick up the pieces
                                                                                and create harmony.
I want the planets to dance to the ineffable melody
of our heartbeats becoming one.

I want you for as long as you’ll let me.

I want to spend every night tucked between the sheets, enveloped in your scent.
I want your arms generously graced around my body
and the thought in our heads that if we ever let go, we’d lose part of ourselves.
I want to kiss the outlines of your smiles and we’ll call it dimples.

I don’t know who you are yet, but I want you.

And I’m sorry I want so much.

I want to sink into your soul and seek shared sunsets.
Curl up in your arteries and get lost in your horizon.

Refresh me like a new day.
Encase me.
Embrace me.
Erase me.
I want to get lost in you.

I dream of you in colors that don’t exist.
Speak of you in words unfathomed.
You’re a new creation.
Mine.

Consume me.

Refuse me.

Use me.
I want to find myself in you.

I wonder if the moon feels like we take it for granted.

Maybe we are the ones responsible for the waxing and the waning
of the moon.
We must learn of our responsibility.
                                                                It is the same for people

It is a constant cycle of convincing ourselves we are
something people want to see--
luminous like the
orb that lights the night.
And then convincing ourselves
we are only a crescent of a person--
not worth the space
allotted to us.
                               Just like the moon.

It is not nature that controls its cycle.

We are born from the moon. It is more human than we are comfortable admitting.

Waning is genetic and there is no cure.

Whoever said that the eyes are
the windows to the soul
had obviously never seen
a set of poetic hands.

As they tumbled
syllables into songs
like waterfalls
roaring a powerful
“Hallelujah.”

Hands drenched in blood
decorated with scrapes and bruises
grasping for memories long repressed.
Memories only brought back
when their pen grazes the
inviting blank canvas before them.

2 o’clock in the morning
crying to no one in particular
as their heart slowly
but however, beautifully
bleeds onto the canvas,
crinkled around the edges
because it’s taken awhile
to get these words out.

Whoever said that they eyes are
the windows to the soul
had obviously never gotten a glimpse
of the complexity that is
a poet’s mind.

Minds crammed with the
hurts of yesterday,
the dreams of tomorrow,
and the change they wish to bring about.

Different experiences call certain memories
from subconscious to conscious
as their dreams slow dance with doubt.
And their ideas for change
are wasted on ears
filled with fingers of ignorance.

Still they press on, in a
beautifully, depressing battle
of desire versus dejection.
Hoping a single phrase
will strike the ear
of someone who needed to hear it.
And touch
the heart of someone who needed to feel it.
Because the potential to reach
the unwilling,
the unable,
and the unwanted,
is worth the uphill struggle.

Whoever said that they eyes are
the windows to the soul
had obviously never experienced
the power of a poetic heart.

Hearts strong with experience,
but cautious because of it.
The unrelenting beat
as it is used, stepped on,
and thrown away.
Do you hear it?
Ringing in your ears.
Unable to escape from
it’s heartbreaking
melody of “what ifs”
and “if onlys.”
Hiding behind
walls of regret
and instances of deceit
where it was once stolen.
911 was called,
but they were
cardiac arrested
for allowing this break in to occur.
An accessory to their own pain.

Whoever said that the eyes are
the windows to the soul
had obviously never met
a poet.

They say, that the sun sets best in Arizona.
The only reason I believed them
was because the first time we met
you leaned in close, crooked smile and all
pointed to the horizon ablaze
and whispered

"I painted that for you."

I've downloaded it's image on my retinas,
so even in the pangs of night
I know it's warmth.

Through my search, I have noted:

That everything is more beautiful when it burns.

That the sparks of a first kiss will be forever envious
of the pulsating rays of the sun.
And that love isn't beautiful until it is set on fire.
You taught me that.

We spent our time getting lost in each others horizons.
Staying up late, chain smoking and
getting drunk on Walt Whitman
until morning dripped from the skyline.

And like the rainbow that serves as
a reminder of God's mercy,
the sunset is a reminder of yours.

*You just couldn't let me burn any longer.