the seven things i cannot share  
the seven things i cannot share:
1. anxiety (a storm that never ends, the rain slashing my cheeks when it used to softly brush the hair from my eyes)
2. fear (constant; the breath that i pull from my lungs or the thoughts that run rampant in my mind)
i. of things i cannot see (of uncertainty; of the mystics beneath the waves that can grab my ankles and pull me beneath)
ii. of the darkness (the only thing that makes me blind; the only thing that takes away the power that i am afraid of, yet have learned to depend on, like my feet upon clotted soil)
iii. of silence (the thing that dampens the cacophonous torrent to leave a blank slate, begging to be filled with words i am unable to say)
iv. of emotion (the thing that rules in a diamond-encrusted throne in my mind; the thing that has given and taken ten times more away; the thing that has ruined more than built)
3. quiet (the few words on the slate that accompany my chalk-caked, raw fingers; the few words i was able to share under cover of anonymity)
4. truth (the harsh mistress that holds me by a chain and muzzles my philosophies to speak only the sentences required, the syllables necessary)
5. memory (a liquid picture of the grand and the traitorous that falls through my fingers like oil)
6. pain (the intensity that demands to be soft; the thing that i can relate to the most and suffer from in its similarity)
7. happiness (the genuinity that can be used as a weapon, sharpened steel and a weighted hilt; the thing that can build skyscrapers and grasp the clouds to also start wars)

and what i wish i could:
myself (every ounce of stardust, of sea foam, and of burning light)
    i. hope (the unerring sense of optimism: that this star won’t explode, but glow brightly with the power of a thousand suns)
    ii. dreams (the seemingly impossible and “just within reach”, the moon at the height of day)
    iii. loves (the strength with which one can be weak; the strings and cans through which i can share the things i never thought i could, ears and mouths pressed to rough edges with the intent of nothing more than to be there)

At approximately 7:43 a.m., when perfect cars with perfectly tinted windows spewing their perfect, cancerous smoke rumbled past on the busy streets between chain coffee shops and designer pumps clicking on cold pavement, the coins would clink in my ruddy can at the highest pitch. This was the time at which wrists wrapped in non-cracked watches and nails painted with calculatingly  precise white lines would help flip dimes or nickels or pennies from mountain rain - aloe vera - citrus burst scented hands. They would flood the bottom as their eyes flooded with pity, their shoes chuckling harshly as they walked away, my holey-socked feet mottled with embarrassment. And this would continue, as long as I kept my teeth bared, instead of behind my thin lips, and my eyes fresh with sea water, as if I had just seen a kicked puppy in this lifeless part of the neighborhood. Chain link fences would warble woefully with the wind, caging me into my “office”, if you could call it that. Just a ratty Coleman sleeping bag, stolen from the scraps of the others in the streets, a small bottle of water, and a couple of pieces of bread a woman had given me. Her hair had been perfectly curled, pale fingers entwined with the auburn strands. Her coat had been freshly laundered, but her bread was moldy and stale. One day, in the middle of the summer, humidity wrapping my skin in horrid sensation and soaking me to the bone, I thought just how much I was like that puppy. I lived off of bread crusts and orange peels, droplets of water from discarded water bottles and sugar-loaded frappuccinos left on the sidewalk in the morning rush. Those with perfect manicures and bad-mannered stilettos might as well have stuck a post-it note, maybe bright blue with spots of sun fading, on my can saying “low budget beast”. Because that is what I was. I was a zoo animal, flaunting my aggression to have a photo snapped of me or a little treat, maybe a few coins. Thirty-seven cents could put light in my eyes like some who saw the subject of their addiction for the first time in hours. I could attack, sure. And that’s what they expected. They could donate two seconds of their lives and be thrilled by the spectacle that was me in my holey-socks and stained American Eagle sweatshirt. I thought I was human, perfect like them, but maybe I truly was an animal.

“When the skies are grey,”
a soft voice sang,
“think of the sun that lights every day.

If you see the mischievous fey,
dancing by the babbling, babbling brook
when the skies are grey,

Should they serve you tea and biscuits on a silver tray,
never believe their false saccharine, but
think of the sun that lights every day.

Think of the mermaids who lay on the bay,
Tails iridescent in the summer sunshine
When the skies are gray.

Think of the dormouse with his waltz and his sway,
holding his tiny paws aloft on another’s tiny shoulders.
Think of the sun that lights every day.”

Her voice would float through the nursery, gay
as the blooms in the springtime when she sang
“When the skies are grey,
think of the sun that lights every day.”