positivity feels like a drop of water in a desert
and i'm tired of calling you with nothing to say
because if the desert were an ocean, i'd be the curve of a wave
something forever shifting, steep then still, steep then still
constant, but not the same
(splash splash, ripple ripple
a storm and a tide shift and a push of an oar
but then i guess even shipwrecks have anchors)

it's something my math teacher taught me to think of in numbers
the idea of a shifting wave
a fundamental of calculus, easily measured by tangent lines and graph paper,
a protractor and a trusty dixon ticonderoga number 2
(the best pencil in the world, i've been told)

but textbooks, backpacks, and the smell of dry erase
never gave me any clue of how to deal with seasickness.

do you like that world?
do you sit at your desk staring at chemical equations
considering a list of things that dead white men did or didn't do
a pencil in one hand (dixon ticonderoga number 2)
a knife in the other,
blood and ink and a bathroom sink
spilled like oil on pavement across your mind
(thick and dark in a toxic puddle, bad for the earth
but if you look at it sideways, sometimes you see rainbows)

when you go to bed and your hands shake and your breath
shivers out of you like a ghost,
are you satisfied with your world of locker slams and ABCs
and choices that you're told are yours?

maybe you're the desert
maybe i'm your drop of water
i'm tired of calling you with nothing to say
because really i'd guess i have too many words
i'm an ocean, motion sick from my own fluctuating sea,
and i would never want for you to be like me,
you're beautiful with your mountains and rocks and sand
i just with i could make you understand
how ever part of you glows when you talk about music
or how free your voice sings when you talk to me
while you're aimlessly doodling masterpieces
on some stupid vocab sheet.