People get
butterflies
in their stomachs
from love.
My love was so immature and true,
that a single caterpillar
was eating its way
through my heart.

Sometimes, I am in love with myself.
I force them to witness my love for my melanin
because they would love for me to hate my melanin.
I know that I am seen, but I want to be heard, 
The first amendment allows me to speak, but they refused to hear a word-
that comes from my mouth.
My lips stereotyped as too black.
My diction too proper to act like this,
yet my slang is too ghetto to act like that...
Sometimes, I wonder what it's like to be white.
I hate being stared at when I speak in Spanish.
I never know if it's in disgust or in comfort, 
because the sound of the double "r" rolling off of my tongue
sounds like the ricochet of the bullets they fire from their guns.
Since they no longer can enslave us like animals, they slaughter us
because, "if I can't have you no one can."
I refuse to be put down.
I refuse to shutdown.
My brown skin threatens,
and you all should be afraid.
Because I will banish your negativity with my Latin American flow,
speaking in Spanish with the Bachata tempo filling my veins.
My Ebonics is iconic, 
and I refuse to be put in a box when the world is a sphere.

I... am more... than this.

i wish i could create something that would make you proud
anything good enough

but i know nothing could ever be good enough for you

i learned it from you first
i will never be good enough
not for anyone
and never myself

I wanted to be an astronaut
You wanted to be dead
But in the end
I ended up deep underground
Away from the earth’s surface
While you became a star in the night sky
Becoming one with the universe
I can’t reach to you from where I lay
But I know that you’ve look down at me
with the cosmos on your shoulders

You lived my dream
And I became your destiny

I pick up
he screams, I don’t know what
he threatens, he spins thread
I plead. I say sorry, I don’t know why

“have you taken your medication?”
wrong question, wrong time

I receive a list of tasks to perform before sundown
1. remove these friends
2. admit to these things
3. give up my dreams
3. …give up me

swallowed by the waves, never to be seen
smiling when he chose me