spent years wandering halls
cutting the "i" from my sentences
forming words from vowels
and emotions from consonants
hard and solid, but nothing
without that internal structure

guess that describes me pretty well
all consonants, harsh "t" and definite "d"
and the ever-slippery "y", like me
never making up its mind

felt like a half-learned language
still do, really
like someone forgot to learn the proper nouns
forgot to turn the sentence around
grab the sound and speak it

there's an accent colouring my life
awkward and stuttering, unsure
and never fluent enough
to step in time with the music
for long enough to make it matter

words from vowels
and emotions from consonants
hard and solid, but nothing
without that internal structure

I loved you not because you loved me...


But because I was a hurricane            
And you loved to dance in the rain.

Please just don't love me.
Don't look past the flaws.
Don't tell me that I deserve better,
Or that you're not my past.
Don't tell me that you think I'm wonderful,
Or look at me with your intoxicating eyes.


Don't look past what I'm telling you.
Please don't see that I'm dying for you to love me.

I'll drop a twenty dollar bill into the take-a-penny tray at the local gas station today
A tiny donation to the broken mother with four kids who needs a tank of gas to get her to a job that barely pays her the money she needs to feed her children
She goes without tonight

I'll smile at the Walmart door greeter this week
An acknowledgement that will ripple through her subconscious to tell her that suicide is not an option
The boy on check out lane 4 is

I will pull over expeditiously for the ambulance racing by
The new father to be is craddling his newborn baby
Crying out helplessly while his fiance bleeds on their new kitchen floor
Her life will not be lost today

Your reactions to the world around you are what show the world that it does not revolve around you
You revolve around it
Feet planted firmly
Gravity holds down the ability to stay content to my skin like microbs burying into a foreign body

Hold the door tomorrow
You might meet your reason to wake up

they said that i couldn't be a writer.

not until i could trap my thoughts in parallel lines before 4 a.m
or until they could see my work as concrete instead of mist.

but i've written symphonies without reading a single note,
composed verses on the curve of a person's smile,
scribbled out a narrative through the fog of a bus window.

the world is mine.
the words are mine.

and they will never know.

i am not the girl your mother warned you about.
you know, the one with the pierced lip and a glare
that could start a fire during the monsoon season.
the girl whose arms are inky wings entwined with
weeds and paper chain reminders of past loves.
the girl whose name tastes like smoke on your lips
and whose report cards are littered with the one
letter that begins her most favorite swear word.

i am not the girl your mother warned you about.
the only relics that i carry on my body are scars
from playgrounds that kissed me back too hard.
my lungs consist of both words and silences,
neither of which i have found a way to control.
i am a few inches short of dangerous and about
nineteen years wiser than a pack of cigarettes.

your mother warned you about the girls who
are hurricanes, that will see your body as a stone
they can toss across the oceans without a second
glance. hearts going seventy miles an hour have
no time for regret. but there is always a sign
or a season that brings them; each one you meet
will be mapped out on a list of broken promises;
hazel, audrey, katrina. they won't let you forget.

but i am not a hurricane; i am a california earthquake
with a 7.8 on the richter scale of volatile personalities.
i will come without warning and dissolve the earth
into dust under your feet. there will be nowhere for
you to hide; your body will unravel into war with itself,
and your mother, wide-eyed, will wonder why you
let me in. but i know better. she taught you to train
your eyes to the sky when not even a seismograph
could pick out a heartbeat buried 1800 miles deep.

every three seconds, a plane makes
a landing somewhere in the world.
still, i wonder whether the hundreds
of people perched inside each belly
are coming home or merely touching
the ground before leaving it again.
and i wonder if i'll always be the one to
memorize time zones instead of faces
and leave a carousel of empty suitcase
hearts forever circling ground behind.
i only take what i can carry and a love
of that size has no hope to cheat gravity.
eighty percent of the population has a
fear of the world beyond the altitudes
but somewhere down the line, my heart
was made a compass pointing due north.
in another life, i think i would've worn a
perky blue hat and crimson lipstick smile,
pouring drinks and charming passengers
if it meant that i could call the sky home.
when i was a child, my mother was made
to gate off staircases and barricade the
stepladders so that i would not mistake
them as pathways leading up to heaven.
i used to imagine she'd open my chest
to find nothing but clouded blue air and
hollow bones, my pulse tapping out in
morse code the only wish i've ever had:
please, make me a bird and let me fly.