you had birds in your mouth and sunlight dripping from your eyelashes.
i promised i wouldn't speak if you wouldn't change faces twice an hour.
we made conversation under a tree and sleep-walked through your kitchen.
i couldn't stare for your poetry disguised as fingers, always moved your hands.

i opened your window and slid to the street, took a walk with the recycling.
my hands looked tired the next morning, and you wouldn't take no.
when the lights fell asleep, we ran for the boats and slipped into the water.
the moon smiled and pulled us apart, i never matched your shoes again.

Conscience, consuming.
My stomach has turned inside
and in on itself.

My eyes have rotted
and reduced to such lifeless,
stationary orbs.

Today is the day,
I ***** my weaknesses
to teach myself strength.

What’ll happen if I don’t receive my university degree?  
Will I wake up one day with 5 kids and an extreme head ache?
Will I have a son that I’ll yearn to Yank out of his world and bring him back to ours,
So that he will one day be able to care for his daughter?
Will I have to deal with a younger me and constantly worry of the boyfriend,
Even though she makes the grade and will finish what she starts?
Will I have twin girls developing into women, with perpetual yelps back and forth?
Or will I have an itty bitty girl, big and bad running around the house writing just that onto the white walls that we’ll have to paint over because we won’t want the land lord to become upset and have to move again?

All of this with music and television going on in the background.

Mama eggs on our attendance at the University, so that we won’t “end up like such.”
She did it.
She did it with all of us and we can do it with all of whom ever.  
However way fate choses, she shall live through us.
Because no degree is a surety.