the moon is a lesbian,
which i know because she has
kissed every inch of my body
more often than any lover
i've ever known.

i have watched the way
she kisses the ocean
and guides her gently home,
have seen her face reflected with love
in the ever-changing sparkling surface of the sea,
and i don't know any other word
to describe a love like that.

the day we smoked a joint in the woods
and then walked eight miles in the rain
to gas station coffee,
we passed two other gas stations on the way,
but you were holding my hand and
i didn't want it to stop.
you said
"you're beautiful"
and i said
~~~~
because you were the most remarkable
person i had ever seen,
leaned up against the hood of a stranger's car,
smoking a cigarette like a lesbian james dean.

you'd call yourself
"lesbian" sixteen times before breakfast
until it stopped sounding like venom
and started to sound like a prayer,
because how could i ever look at
love like this and feel anything
but holy?
my new church was the woods
by the river,
and i learned to worship
at the altar of your body.
you took me in your arms and you said,
"baby,
you're beautiful,"
and i told you i loved you
because beautiful had never
meant anything to me
except that i had something
people could take.
i heard "beautiful" from your lips and it sounded
like a blessing.

the moon is a lesbian because
she knows how to love without taking,
i have scarcely loved a man
who has learned how to love without taking,
that is not to say that no man
can love without taking,
but it is a skill that is learned
through a grief
that i have shared with every
queer woman i have ever met.

when you kissed me in the attic,
it was not the first time
i had been kissed,
but it was the first time that a touch
felt like a gift and not a punishment,
and it was the first time i understood
why people write love songs.
i wanted to write you a love song,
but after a lifetime afraid of my own voice,
all i could sing you were hymns.
not because i had made you an idol,
but because your hands on my body
made me feel clean for the first time.

the moon is a lesbian because
the night i stumbled out of
the apartment of the man
who only loved me when
he thought he could keep me,
blood on my lips and nowhere to go,
the moon kissed my fingertips
and she said,
"baby,
what took you so long?
welcome home."

When I was fifteen years old I came home from school one day and wrote a poem instead of cutting myself.
The next day I didn't write a poem.
Eighteen only wrote poetry in red.
Nineteen crawled under their desk with the lights turned off.
Twenty had panic attacks.
But thirteen still loved the world.
And ten only cared about going out to play.
And nine never thought growing up to be a gender would hurt so much.
But twenty-one can't breathe in this skin anymore.
And twenty-one doesn't want a twenty-two anymore.
And nineteen tried to pretend these feelings weren't real.
And fifteen tried to eradicate all the feelings altogether.
And seventeen just cried a lot.

My years have come together to unfold me into a disaster.
I am broken even in my most whole parts.
I am empty even on my most alive days.
If you send out a SOS into my chest the sound will ring off into its empty chambers and only answer itself.

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

my wrists still hurt more from your rough hands
pinning me to the floor,
than anything I've ever done to them before.

my head still aches more from screaming,
rather than by an old concussion lingering.

my eyes still cry and leak over,
but I'm not sure why anymore.

But as long as it's don't ask, don't tell,
I'll be fine.

You can call me Alex or Alexandra
The first time I said I liked girls my voice broke
Everyone turned to me as if I had cursed at the dinner table
My mother told me to go take a shower and think about it
But mom, you can't wash off who you are
And yes, I have been thinking about it
A lot

In a small town news spreads like wildfire
I was the walking disappointment in the middle of town square
I had been reduced to it till I was purged of this evil that threatened to claim my soul
No one would sit next to me in class
And everyday after the assembly I was taken aside and told I would burn
Hell had no mercy for those like me
But people, you don't tell a sixteen year old child that she is possessed by the devil

And the other day when I went to get my hair cut
They loped it all off
And they said there you like to **** girls now you can be a man
But a bad haircut doesn't make me a man
And all the abuses you can throw at me won't change who I am
And I stood there with their glares digging daggers into the back of my head
The old man cursed ****, and the parents covered their childrens eyes
As if I had a disease they would catch if they looked for too long

And they threw a burning stick in my front yard and said burn you deserve to burn
So i did
I burnt
I burnt myself piece by piece till there was nothing left but ashes
But remember you can burn down one Alex, one ****, one unholy sin but
There will rise another and another and another
Till this world will have to change and then
There will be a **** at every street corner and
I will look you in the eye and say how many will you burn?

nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.

this is not a poem. this is a plea. this is me begging you to hear me when i tell you that i love you. my voice is weak and shaking like the branches of a willow in the wind. my hands are trembling like tremors under the surface of the earth. my vision is so blurred that i can barely focus my eyes as i type. i can feel the impending collapse of my lungs as they are further crushed by the weight of all my anxieties. my strength is fading, but i'm still screaming for you, only you don't seem to hear me. i'm reaching for you but you won't take hold of my hand. i swear to god i'm trying with everything i have to hold you together, but i'm terrified it's not enough. the very thought of your nonexistence consumes me in a fear i have never known. i have never been good at telling people i need them, but i can tell you how vacant this world would be if you left it. everything would change. you can't come in to my life like you did and then just leave it with no warning. you can't do that to me. you can't tell me that you want to marry me and then try to disappear without so much as a goodbye. you just can't. so i don't mean to make you feel guilty, i just need you to understand. don't you know what it would do to me if you left? how many times are you going to almost-die before you realize i will never be the same if you do?

you are fog over midnight water
and i am just a sailor's daughter
with a crippling fear of drowning
and a proneness to playing sink or swim.

m.f.

We think death is romantic
Because the same lilies our ex bought us
On our first date are neatly draped
Over the caskets as decoration
(But there are no flowers in our arms
As we lie alone inside)

We think death is liberating
Because we imagine the shackles
Of society falling off our wrists and ankles
As we fly to a better place
(But in reality
We are locked in a prison
Beneath six feet of dirt)

We think death is infinite
Because we can never return
To the people who harmed us
And the house that was never a home
(But our bodies are not eternal
As they slowly decompose
Back to nature in the ground)

What we fail to realize is that
Life is romantic, liberating, and infinite

Romantic in the form of a sunrise
Climbing over a calm sea,
Liberating in the form of birds
Traveling to anywhere they please,
Infinite in the form of flowers,
Dying and regrowing in the spring

So on the day that you make your decision,
To end your (romantic, liberating,
And infinite) life I beg you to reconsider,
Because you may already have exactly
What you are looking for.