the truth is no one ever taught me how to fix a flat tire or how to ask for help or what love was even good for in the first place

and the truth is that the cookie was good but the lemon icing wasn't and the truth is baking should be done without any kind of lemon at all

and the truth is i wish you'd hold me close enough that our skin fused together and i could burrow into your spine and learn all the things you won't teach me

and the truth is you were never good at making eye contact but i dare you to look at me long enough that i can trace the line that connects your iris to your pupil and count how many shades of black a person can produce

and the truth is i don't know if the grass has fingerprints but i know that yours are cigarette stained and no better at letting go than mine

and the truth is i am a dump site and you are an inhale and i am clockwork and you are a melody and i can't keep my teeth off your eloquence

and the truth is my feet are covered in acrylic paint from leaving smudged footprints in sparkly things

and the truth is i don't want you all to myself but you can pretend i'm yours when i'm engulfed in the ocean and making it hard for you to breathe

and the truth is i'm looking for a different kind of intimacy from you

and maybe it's just some teenage girl talking but the truth is that i want to drown with you. i want to burn with you. i want to scream with you so violently that the body that crushes my lungs crumbles and i become a balloon for real this time

and the truth is, if you hadn't called me beautiful, i would have mistaken last night for a paradise i don't believe in

The moon is beautiful in her solitude.
From afar she is like a pearl, pure white
Like milk.
Though she knows multitudes:
She is not white like a pearl, smooth like
silk.
Surfaces are cratered, tumultuous, grey and not white.
Sometimes she is shy, disappearing behind clouds and shadowed trees,
As if she were scared of her own light.
She waxes, she wanes, she decreases
And fades, only to become brighter than ever.
She knows what it is like to be ever -changing, outshining everything in
Her splendor.

Like her, I want to illuminate dark skies.

MESSENGER

Now at the Seventh Gate the seventh chief,
Thy proper mother's son, I will announce,
What fortune for this city, for himself,
With curses he invoketh:--on the walls
Ascending, heralded as king, to stand,
With paeans for their capture; then with thee
To fight, and either slaying near thee die,
Or thee, who wronged him, chasing forth alive,
Requite in kind his proper banishment.
Such words he shouts, and calls upon the gods
Who o'er his race preside and Fatherland,
With gracious eye to look upon his prayers.
A well-wrought buckler, newly forged, he bears,
With twofold blazon riveted thereon,
For there a woman leads, with sober mien,
A mailed warrior, enchased in gold;
Justice her style, and thus the legend speaks:--
'This man I will restore, and he shall hold
The city and his father's palace homes.'
Such the devices of the hostile chiefs.
'Tis for thyself to choose whom thou wilt send;
But never shalt thou blame my herald-words.
To guide the rudder of the State be thine!


ETEOCLES

O heaven-demented race of Oedipus,
My race, tear-fraught, detested of the gods!
Alas, our father's curses now bear fruit.
But it beseems not to lament or weep,
Lest lamentations sadder still be born.
For him, too truly Polyneikes named,--
What his device will work we soon shall know;
Whether his braggart words, with madness fraught,
Gold-blazoned on his shield, shall lead him back.
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Guided his deeds and thoughts, this might have been;
But neither when he fled the darksome womb,
Or in his childhood, or in youth's fair prime,
Or when the hair thick gathered on his chin,
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Nor in this outrage on his Fatherland
Deem I she now beside him deigns to stand.
For Justice would in sooth belie her name,
Did she with this all-daring man consort.
In these regards confiding will I go,
Myself will meet him. Who with better right?
Brother to brother, chieftain against chief,
Foeman to foe, I'll stand. Quick, bring my spear,
My greaves, and armor, bulwark against stones.