sometimes the seams split and vines spill out, tender tendrils searching so soft and green and f r a g i l e

blooms open petal to petal sepals stretching stems extended something so precious and kind, so close

the color of moonlight sliding across cool sheets, sighing on bare skin, softly holding your hand in the lonely dark; you smile in your sleep and your dreams lull to quiet,
      soft,
   intangible moonlight as infallible protector; sometimes she puts flowers in your hair

veins overrun with petals, roots entwined with stems, stems sprouting and growing and moving with each breath, everything full and soft and fragile;
vulnerability, willingly: safe fragility--
      letting the flowers grow freely
    and trusting the wind
not to blow them away

A swirling of sounds, color, movement, page marked vivace: meaning lively, vivid
Our eyes meet and the music starts; from the first beat I realize
You don't need theory to know what keys pluck at my heartstrings
Simpler than intervals and your smile, a crescendo into the forte of your embrace
The curl of your lips as your laughter resonates a harmony with my own we breathe
and even the silence is as beautiful as the noise
I am so thankful for those repeats, a skip up the step to your front door and the creak as it swings open and I spin into your arms
a different ending to each beginning, always going back to the same butterfly melody flitting wings parading color and light around the room as we sit,
pinkies entwined like vines on a garden wall, and we are both blooming in the golden summer sun, hearts pounding blood rushing, lush and alive
Your smile, your words, our hands together:
A world of colors and sounds all our own
the tonic note of my favorite  tune and the pick up to a whole new melody
Thank you.

When they finally cut you open they found butterflies crawling on your ribcage and flowers where your lungs were supposed to be
An eternal spring in your chest that everyone could feel when you drew near, the kind of green that people craved and needed to breathe
Where your heart was charted lay the biggest, most beautiful gemstone that anyone had ever seen.
They found everything that you tore yourself to pieces looking for, all of the splendor and beauty and precious things that somehow eluded you no matter how hard you searched or how many times you cut yourself open to find. It was all right there, right before their eyes, as dazzling as a thousand suns and majestic as the stars
When they closed your eyes, the starlight had already left them. Galaxies ripped from existence because you would never laugh again, never think of one you loved, never see the first bloom or hear the first bird of spring.
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if anything really happened. there is still a hole in my chest the size of you that no fresh spring day or starry night can fill up there is no earthly thing that can replace you because you cannot be replaced, you were part of the leaves on the trees and the air that I long for and now you are gone

You started on a conquest for your soul and it led you to a dark forest of branches that twisted to hurt you and wind that whispered lies just loud enough for you to hear that poisoned your spring and closed your eyes forever to the beauty that was inside of you that bloomed out of your wrists when their whispers came back to haunt you crouching, dark, pulsing with your blood not good enough not good enough not good enough
But they were wrong. You were enough. You were more than enough; you were everything that springtime should be.
You walked in as a lioness and out as a lamb
Now it’s winter and I can’t see you in the trees or the sky because everything is silent and cold and dying and the spring inside you is fading because
When they finally cut you open they released your beauty into the world
and it will be a brighter place because of you.

His wrists are my favorite part of his body,
Bones pressing delicately through pale, unscarred skin in a way mine haven't since the 6th grade.
The only bones showing on my body are my elbows and knees, just barely
And the worried bones of my insecurities.
I wish I could see my shoulder blades and hipbones.
I'd never hoped to be a skeleton but
I'd hoped to be proud of my appearance.
Even though my best friend tells me that I'm pretty just the way I am,
I know I'm not as pretty as my sister;
We're twins but no one ever believes us
She has gorgeous blonde hair and pale skin and sky blue eyes,
Hourglass shape.
I think she got the looks, but I always hope I got the brains.
Today I don't know which is the better end of the deal.
I know I am fat. I don't need any doctors or parents or bullies to tell me that
My curves are not big-*****,
Obesity doesn't run in my family,
No one runs in my family,
And by no one I mean me.
My every outfit is prefaced by compression shorts and slimming colors and self-conscious shame.
My stomach has ugly purple stretch marks like tongues of hungry fire
Burning away my self-esteem
Summer evenings aren't fun anymore
When my father tells me I'm too big to swing on the swing set
And my mother asks if I'm pregnant.
I'm not.
I'm a size 14. My mother thinks I'm a size 10.
When I try on the too-small clothes she brings home  
I cry in the privacy of my bedroom mirror,
Oceans of salted pain worry over my face,
Try to rinse away the guilt.
At least I'm not an ugly crier.

To the ******* at Mongolian Barbecue last night:
Just because you let your short shorts and flowered headband
Scream assumptions about your homosexuality doesn't mean
You can make those assumptions about others,
Forcing red-faced shame and trembling knees on a stranger,
Your hands clawing the pride from blue eyes like
Storm clouds making the world grey.
Butch and **** are never words that should come from your lips,
To someone you don't know
Just because you portray yourself as flamboyant
And she has her own style
They carry too many decades of hatred and fear to be
Tossed into casual conversation
Like land mines in her closet.
I don't care if you thought you were joking or being funny or cute
Her leather jacket and kickass combat boots don't
Paint some sort of rainbow bullseye
Between her shoulder blades, behind her heart.
People have enough to deal with in this world
Without having to defend themselves against your ignorance,
Without having to stop their tears from
Making small oceans on the streets of Ann Arbor.
Butch and **** should not be thrown from your lips
Carelessly,
Meaning none of the weight they carry.
You probably didn't see her cry
Because that's just the kind of person she is
But I did,
A thunderstorm of conflicting emotions and heart-wrenching, blood-curdling cries,
A deep-seated ache that won't be washed away
With my hugs or chocolate or
Assurances that you are, in fact,
A **** who doesn't deserve to know her.
11:30 pm she walked through the front door with red eyes and damp cheeks,
Her voice thick and choking on
Your arrogant, misplaced words,
And I might not always get along with my sister
But I felt my sternum crack right through the middle
When she spoke of you,
Ribcage shattering,
Rainbows pouring from my lungs
To try and knit her fractured, hopeful heart
Back together.
I am my sister's keeper.
To the ******* at Mongolian Barbecue,
I hope you learn to grow up and see how your
Words splinter souls like weeds splitting concrete
But until then
*******.

I breathe in this silence that is not
Silenced,
Air alive with heartbeats and
Clocks ticking too slow,
Eyes meeting over
Sticky plastic tables,
Snapping away like an awkward blind date,
Fingertips drumming impatiently.
Wait.
Calm.
Be patient.
Tick...tock........tick...............tock

I can't, I won't, my son laying
One floor, 3 hallways, 12 rooms away,
But we are relegated to the hospital cafeteria as if my husband and I are naughty schoolchildren,
Interfering.
My red shirt crumples beneath
Nervous fingers,
The same shade as the blood given
To my son, not knowing it contained
Death.
Why can't I fight with my son,
My son,
Shining brightly and boldly as the sun,
Infected with a blood-borne killer we were never warned about.
Hemophilia is a tough diagnosis,
But my careful worrying wasn't enough to save him from a
Diagnosis of ostracism and certain death.
AIDS.
Oh God.
Breathe.
Can't breathe.
Time moves too fast, my son racing towards eternity
Alone.


White sheets and sterile beds rob
My son of all his sunshine,
Lips blue and pale like my husband's jacket,
Nothing but incessant beeping and bustling nurses who can't fix him,
Clock going tick, tock, tick, tock.
I see red.
Red dripping into and out of his arms through silver needles,
How do I know that this is safe,
No one knows if this is safe,
This is our only hope.


Tick..tock.....tick........tock.
White coat of the doctor moving too quickly towards us,
We run.
My heart thumping red and my stomach yellow bile and my eyes leaking blue.
Hospital room not room enough for all my emotions,
All of my tears,
All of my grief,
All his last breaths.
My son.
No longer my sunshine,
Just a pale winter afternoon,
No sun beneath cold sheets of snow.
My son.

Time moves too slow when everyone wears black,
Like molasses dripping from a jar into
Metallic air and earthy graves.
Like ash clouding out the sun.
My son.
No more my sun.