‍   there is a rat in our room.

‍   we've always had a rat problem, but never in our room. in the kitchen; in the living room; in the backyard, yes. i don't know how it got here, but it did.

‍   i spend most time alone in the room.

‍   i guess i'm not really alone. the rat is 'with' me. it stays out of my way, mostly, but sometimes, if i hold my breath and lower whatever song's blasting off of spotify; i can hear it. it scampers around in the clothes closet. it runs across the floors. i've seen it once or twice.

‍   no one else in my family seems to care it's there.

‍   they know it is, but they haven't done anything about it. usually we'd set up mice traps but having one in the room is always a danger - we walk barefoot and throw our things around. the trap might end up snagging us before it lands the mouse.

‍   they call the rat 'friendly'.

‍   it's 'the friendly'. sometimes, i talk out loud to it, when i'm alone. i tell it about how i'm not ready for mom to leave. i tell it about how i'm scared for college. (i must be going crazy.) i was certain that the moment it would hear my voice; booming, at no one in particular; it would scuttle away.

‍   but, sometimes, if i hold my breath... i like to pretend i can hear it listening.

‍   my favorite story from mythology is how humans were originally four-legged and four-armed, with two heads and two faces. zeus; the almighty, the destroyer, the supreme god above all gods; feared these abominations and split them, sent them all around the earth, and condemned them to spend their lives searching for their other halves.

  when love starts to sound more verb than textbook, i find that the faces don't really matter. all the private parts and stereotypes blur together; it took me years to put a word to it. do you know how that feels. to wonder if something is wrong with you because you like both, and it's not even about the fingers or the skin; it's about why they have freckles in the first place or what makes them want to bite their nails.

  zeus, the most powerful of them all, knew what was going on way before all of us. there's a reason soul mates are called "soul" mates. it's more than anatomy. it's more than knowing what fits where. there's power in love that is blind to the puzzle pieces of relationships that has been shoved in to our hands since we were children.

  this is what zeus was so scared of. that one day, we might learn that underneath this disguise is the one thing we shared as beasts that could have brought the king of olympus to his knees. four legs and four arms; two faces, but one heart.

‍   sometimes i catch myself writing like a 2013 tumblr girl. not that i'm against tumblr girls, or 2013, or the writing of girls, really; but you know the type i'm talking about.

‍   mentioning-a-body-part-every-few-paragraphs type. there-is-something-inside-of-you-(probably-a-flower-or-some-other­-plant) type. the type that reeks of cigarettes and seasides and longing. the type that could even just be one or two words

‍   ‍   ‍   written like
‍   ‍   ‍   ‍   ‍   ‍   ‍   ‍   ‍   ‍ this,
‍   ‍   ‍   you see?

‍   ... and people gobble it right up. (i can't blame them. i once did.)

‍   i'm not sure when i realized that there's more to poetry than typewriter aesthetics and talking about bones and rib cages and oceans. sometimes i catch myself comparing eyes to galaxies and i laugh because there are so many eyes, so many poets, so many stars.

‍   i wonder if there's poetry in the little things. the mundane. rainbow gasoline leaks on damp streets; brown brick cafés during golden hour. untied shoe laces. kissing in the back of an uber. (there has to be, right?)

‍   (there has to be poetry in the way my mother bakes her chicken *** pie. the thrum of music playing from another room. emojis. how chlorine sticks to you after swimming in pools. hands that don't fit together; hands that are too big to hold each other; hands that clasp on to each other anyway.)

‍   (there has to be poetry in those.)