Falling in deep,
Or...sending you 19 consecutive text messages
Because I can't sleep without knowing that your head and heart is racing with mine.

Or...smiling for the first time at a compliment
After years of inauthentic grins because you
See my scars ...and you love them.

Or.... Questioning everything I do
Because the day feels meaningless
Without exchanging torn pages
Of our histories to cherish like bibles.

Or... Falling deeply into your melancholy
And wondering if I can ever breathe again.
..It's 5 am and I find myself amidst
The shards of your heart again....

I lay them around me like diamond dust
Scraping the hopelessness from each
Resolved to peer into your memories
and find the light to rebuild the heart
that has blinded you
From shining for two for so long.

Falling... into your twilight...
...and finding my own beauty along the way.
Falling is flying for the first time.

Deeply, I'm falling.

Thick like butter,
My thighs and feelings are delicious
Eat me up
After all – you’re like the little kid who sticks their finger in the batter.

Isn’t it funny how a taste is all it takes to get hooked?
Watch as every confection I formulate becomes
Another fool’s “gold,” a temporary treasure

Hours spent, sweat dripping down my brow
Staining my favorite outfit, that’s what chasing you feels like
Giving you my heart feels like catering to the President
Hell, I make you three meals a day

At breakfast, I start pulling myself together
Eggs, brilliance, cream, sugar, spice, insecurity, vulnerability
And just a dash of sass

From the shower, I go to work
Where I'll inevitably toil harder than the other kiddies in their
Creepy crawler kitchen sets
Like cream, I rise to the top
Hoping to get the grade A stamp that makes me
Gourmet-quality

At lunch, I’d write you poems
Drizzle my words into pans, into molds, into text boxes, letters and journals
Pour out my soul and scrape the things I normally hide out
With a spatula
****! I let you lick the batter while I starved in the hopes of
Looking appetizing enough for you

By dinner, you needed a snack
As usual, you don’t know what you want
Chocolate or vanilla, me or the other boy, or maybe we’re on a diet again?
What’s mother say, “You just need to watch what you put in your mouth?” I'll try to avoid it but inevitably I'll be stocking the pantry hoping to be diverse enough

Then the finale,
Served up on a platter, I throw myself at you nightly.
The waitresses couldn’t package this cake more easily
Aged for 25 years, this is a deceptive little ****

See, I’m richer than any other slice you’ve ordered
Even though I’m poor. Nutritious and wholesome, I make sure I’m brains, body and as balanced as I could be to taste so sweet. I make sure I’m your favorite flavor despite knowing that I’ll never satisfy your cravings. You've had your fill elsewhere but you're here to eat it too...

It doesn’t matter how well-stocked this bakery is
I’m always the desert that’s just too much, maybe you need something less substantial?I’ll watch from the bakery window while you skip on over to the nearest fast food stop to buy your love from the dollar menu
You’re not good enough for these words, this icing, heavy like my heart,
A unique recipe

Baby, you might want this cake
unfortunately, it’s a seasonal treat
and you just missed me on the menu
You always say you could have it, but you
just can't eat it too...

The men shout at me as they drive by
“******, walk like a man!”
They hoot, shout, and laugh
As sunlight blinds their white-trash getaway.

I look around and think
How ridiculous to be unable to walk
How insane for me to think that these legs
Move on their own.
How silly for me, the queen that I am,
To think that my kingdom was
Any place I was welcome.

To be queer and visible
Is to challenge
The stained muscle shirts
“wife beaters,” strung across
Tattooed skin and handlebar
Mustaches of the “real men”
Whose siren calls
Police my step.

Most men hate us
The Children of Naomi Campbell
Men, YES MEN, too unafraid
To straighten our walk
Loosen our pant legs
And be invisible.

To be properly gay
Acceptably gay, to be
Tolerable is to be invisible
To hide, to be “real man”

My manhood is ghostly
Terrifying even
My walk so dangerous that
It is unsafe to even drive by

My community is still
Dangerous, unreal
Waiting for the next truck to drive by
To beat me, tie me to a fence and leave me
Like Matthew Shepard
A ghost on a fencepole

Unwanted, dangerous,
My people are a threat
Legs too long threatening the ability of
“real men” to have simple desires
They will do whatever it takes
To keep it easy.

Walk like a man, they yelled.
I yell back the names of my family:
Tiffany Edwards,
Zoraida Reyes, Kandy Hall
Yaz’min Shancez

Bodies that didn’t walk the right way
These ghosts were once threatening too.
Simply existing means threatening
"real men" and their women

Swinging my hips is literally deadly
To be flirtatious is to be threatening
To invite violence, attention
To get what I want, to be made a man

Real man, I am not real
As if my only job is to
Show others how to walk,
As if the rest of me
Is simply fake, fantasy, irrelevant

See how easily queer people
Are watered down to something unidimensional,
Something that is only a fragment of
“real” people – we are ghosts
Moving among you

Threatening, ******
Never just going to work
But always somehow
threatening, challenging
And forcing fantasies onto the world

Why do we always challenge
What is real? What is normal?
Why can’t a man strut? Why isn’t manhood
Something other than what swings with my
Legs?

Real. Ghostly. Fake. Invisible. Dangerous.
What I hear is powerful, noted, interesting,
….maybe even desirable. (GASP!)

When I walk now, I walk with an army of ghosts
Led by the fallen, queens, and divas
who threatened the men of the past.
I live their lessons and proudly
swish my hips in honor of my adopted
****** ancestors.

We Sashay however we want
Because we've realized that
a "real" men is always
Just a step away.

When you left my house
I almost offered you a receipt
Because you left me like
Tourists leave a hotel room

I look back now and
Know why I lost so much weight
I was trying to make more room for you
So that you could fill me with your love,
I thought

Really, I just made it that much easier
For you to rip my heart out
Without even rolling up your sleeves
It was that easy

“Going to stay with a friend”
Felt like you stole the kingdom’s
Jewels and left.

That’s why I stay up so late
I’ve realized that it’s always when I let you in
That you let yourself out the door

So I fall “in love” with
Grindr profiles that remind me of
Pieces of us that I’m still picking up
Sorting out which pieces go to which
Of our puzzles

I just wish I could tell myself
Apart from you
I’ve inhaled so much of you
Like the smoke that burnt
Every time we touched

It had to be that way
Because I was playing with fire
And I didn’t realize that
We may as well have been
Slow dancing in a burning room

I write letters to you that I’ll never mail
In secret languages, I tell you how stupid we both are
Knowing **** well that what I’m really saying is
That parts of me are still confused

Confused as to whether or not you actually
Ever loved me or if
I was more like the lab specimens
We hung out with

I want to be the fire that burns
Against the skin of lovers who speak in secret tongues
Not in notes I tear up in the dark
But in gasps and croaks

Instead of croaking
Like another dissection frog
You experimented with:
**Even though you earned an A for your work,
I failed you because you never appreciated the class

Mentally, I started titling my poems
“If you only knew…”
the minute that you left

See, we were more like
Mother Nature’s children
Than we thought

Both of us polluted
Like the Ocean, I’m so full of this
Trash that everyone seems to leave me with

You were like poisoned vines,
Twisted and full of thorns
And roses you hide from the light

We built a garden though,
psychedelic and shining through the nights
we always stayed up
late for

Three psychics told me I’d love you
And one of them
In a dying breath told me you’d be
A rose

Boy was he right
I pricked myself just to
Hold you and adore you
Every single time
And I’d do it again

See, gardening takes work
So I cultivate this imaginary love
I hold something fragile every day and
Practice moving slowly enough
Not to break it

I listen to strangers talk
Until I’m bored and I keep….on….
Listening
So that I never miss another word
Love speaks

I look at myself in the mirror
And I find something beautiful
So that I can try to grasp
At how it felt the few times you
Actually looked at me like
I was (AM) a flower too.

I AM A ROSE TOO, ******* IT

I breathe you in like the fragrance
Of these roses that bleed my heart dry
And I wish you cut yourself on my poetry
Half as hard as we both have cut ourselves
Wishing we could bleed out whatever
Makes us undesirable

If only you knew
That I hungered for the few times
You came and watered me with your tears
Nourished my roots with your lips
Rolled around in the dirt
And loved our garden

….More than you loved her.

These nights,
Like heavily molasses,
Fall on me
Sticky and thick

Lost lover, I wonder if you wish for these nights...
….Rough and paradoxically soft in all the right spots…

Laden with memories
treasures
I long to have again

….You smelled of tobacco, musk and spice…

How fast
The simplest
Gifts become
The most sacred

…You always held me when you kissed me…

These nights
Where we wander memories
Both misty eyed and longing
Yet smiling

…I am afraid I’ll never feel that close again….

These nights
When we toss and turn
Hoping to relive
sweet pasts again

....Only the stars know if you stare off into the darkness too...

These nights
Wishing sweetly
that our same dreams

...I still wake up hoping to see you in my underwear...

lived in the arms of
lovers that no longer
entangle us
like molasses

*...On these nights

Privilege: A Poetic Illustration
The open sky
available to birds
free of cages that have
entrapped the
rest of us.
To soar in any direction
knowing no headwind,
net, bars or
wings clipped.
The free bird sings
not so much of power,
for he is
most often blind
to his blessing ,
but of
Choice.
The caged bird,
knowing no
such sky,
watches as
flying
tires faster,
as song
sounds of
battles past.
The sky alone,
rich in pitfalls unseen,
knows
which sky-corner
will be available
to thee.