See, it’s probably all explained in the metaphor of my dreams, where I’ve changed into something sweeter or perhaps alluring /  I’m a rat trap poison with the promise of sugar cane stuck on teeth and I’m so scared at the movements of my body and the woman behind them but I can’t help the daydreams looking to go back /  

See, right now i’m just trying to walk slow unsteady steps of an overgrown colt /  With no one to lean on, I cannot afford to fall /  I must stumble down the path of childhood the way I stutter over these words /  I can’t help it when I let Mama down on Sundays, it’s not my fault I don’t know which traps to set for myself and which fences to build /  I want to get stuck inside the small backyard of my mind, it seems easier than running and losing myself to the leaning grasses of fields and fields of possibilities whose flowers are too wild for me to grow /  

See, I’m terrified in the way of night terrors with too vivid quicksand filling my mouth and hindering screams in a dry drown  - no -  /  In the way of teenage hormone cocktails rising up sternums to build bile and anxiety and hearts tap against the walls of their cage trying to ask ‘how much more adrenaline do you need?’ Or maybe not even that, but I can say in the least poetic way possible I’m scared to be the teen angst poet

See, because I can’t tell if I’m as raw as the girl with the night terror past /  I believe like a rooted subconscious habit that one day I’ll burn my poems the way I’ve burned every single one of my diaries, trying to destroy evidence of the crime I was a person I cannot bear to be anymore /  Trying to delete the way my voice sounded when scrawled across an inkskinned page the way others delete texts from phone contacts they can’t bare to see rather than heal with the closure of a final phone call, the long lasting 1 hour and 20 minutes one /  I’ll backspace all my poems letter by letter then delete my  / docs but even in this - this untrained untested unsure dream - I want to mean something /  

See, I even have a list to prove my whims don’t last /

ONE

I no longer feel homesickness twisting my belly and making my nose pull back in a defensive snarl when the scent of downy detergent on suave body wash rises off clothes /  I can’t even regret the loss of my spreading back muscles laid upon a bed in a room that I called mine and the closing of curtains when I thought that meant safe /  When I thought that meant I didn’t have to think and I thought that meant just me and my distracted mind /  Just the occasional hand missing air and ear missing words I swear should have been whispered just a decibel too loud and drift down the hall /  And a yellow dog too, of course /

TWO

When my brain is heavy with haze but light with thought I just want to read poetry written by greater poets, cry in all the right places and laugh when the I look up, and remember the ways sunbeams fall through blinds and mosquito screens instead of the stifle of a closed window and a sun that heats a fevered curtain /

Today I’m reading poetry to the tune of a severe thunderstorm warning eating chinese delivery I wasn’t home to eat the night before /  I’d lie if I said I was ready to enjoy the way the rain tinkered down my tin shed roof and draw love poems from the awe of a wrathful sky, I’ll just let my bones rest instead /

THREE

For every animate person that hasn’t even ******* me twice over yet, a metaphor poetically describes the beauty of my sore body ache in inanimate terms /  I’ve learned them in the essays for books I’ve never read but now I’m writing poems for a life I haven’t really seen yet /  I fake the different colors for red if it makes me sound pretty, let me imagine love that explodes vermillion and anger spills slow sweet cherry while ignoring the red regret of the veins in my eyelids during too late mornings /  With too late alarms blinking dull red to remind the chipping bitten away red of nails flying to meet deadlines of slow written poems /  

FOUR

My head used to lean against the thrumming window of my family’s biggest car until my teeth felt weird without the constant friction and my temple shot me off center /  I think we all counted the seconds between lightning and thunder just to know how far off the storm was even when it pounded sheets across the thin layer of metal between itself and me /  I just liked to know /  It’s just too hot air meeting cold streams but I don’t think my peeling sunburnt skin will meet cool long fingers anytime soon /  While the goddess of the sky and the goddess of the sea may meet to bruise purple, kisses in the clouds this car ride is the journey of a small small girl touching her own /  I can’t tell if I’m as raw as the girl with the night terror, small fingers to her own shaking mouth and learning how not to bite /

If I made this a poem my metaphor would run back to the dying leaves /  I wish I knew what Autumn time will do to me /  If I will still reach for the summer sun or miss the rain sheet falling storms - that’s a habit I can’t remember /