Oh, Anne.
I can see a butterfly
rise up from the blood stains
you left on the floor.

Our fingers dance around each other
doing the cha cha on faded jeans instead of shiny floors,
picking popped kernels once in a while -
processed butter on the tips of our ballroom thumbs and forefingers.

Let me take a sip of your flat sugar laden drink,
taste it on my lips in a little while.

Hey!
It tickles when you draw question marks on my thighs,
just let your hands make knots with mine.

Train our eyes on the giant screen
where the heroine makes one mistake after another
and isn't that real life?
Blunders and I'm sorry's and
chance meetings and vivid colors
and the boy beside me--
Real. Life.

Maybe we should stay in the flimsy seats
while the credits roll,
pick apart the moving pictures
reminding us of first love and first fears.
Of forgotten dreams and words we lost.

Maybe we should examine the best narrative yet -
you in your soft sweater,
me in my mud-caked shoes.

Hold my hand while we descend the steps;
shadow swallows the bottom,
reminding me of movie monsters and white faced ghosts.

Usher me into the light.

Although, I have to admit,
I see you better when it's dark.

Little boy,
one day when you wake up and peer outside,
I hope you see flowers screaming in color and children dancing.
Little boy,
someday when you look up the sky
I hope you don't see gray,
but bright, bright, blue.
Little boy,
I hope the loudest noise you will ever hear
is your own laughter.
Little boy,
I hope one day you look at yourself
and don't see ruins,
but buildings standing tall,
guarding the city.
Little boy,
hope.

My eyes are heavier than a thousand oceans,
my breath settles      
                        one          
                                                two.
I'm drifting off to the peaceful abyss,
galaxies dancing under my eyelids.
Ping.
"You up?"
Why, yes.
I am.

The power is cut and the house is dark,
it is not yet night, the world bathed in saturated blue,
washed in layers of filter.
We're lost in our own worlds,
my brother and I,
and our silence is understanding
and companionship
and muted friendship.
My mother is in the kitchen,
silhouetted against the candle's orange light,
and she is soft edges
and stitches
and a woman who bore two.
The three of us,
strangers, family,
unknown, discovered,
hidden in the darkness, revealed in the shadows.
I want to say, *this matters.
This moment matters.
You will forget
but I will always remember.

I watched my father scrunch his eyebrows together
whenever my mother said something he didn't like,
his impatience seeping through his dark skin,
apparent in the way he turned his body away
as if he wanted to run from all this
but he's trapped now, trapped forever.
I listened as my mother told me she did not want to stay
and my brother and I are the only things anchoring her unto this godforsaken house
of peeling white paint and crumbling walls and endless shouts and burning words.
I watched them hold each other when things got tough
and I knew it wasn't because of love—
it was because they were the nearest things to each other.
At a very young age I knew love was something that dissolves,
a flower you water everyday,
a story you never stop writing,
And some people, they don't know,
that they have stopped watering,
and they're running out of ink, only on page 3.
Little girl me knew.
Big girl me continues to watch it unfold,
dead petals in their hair
and dark ink between their fingers—
dry

The earth is getting warmer,
the ice are melting,
the polar bears are endangered,
mermaids are not real,
my dad's never getting clean,
you'll never drive two hours to bring me Butterfingers,
you'll never listen to the songs I send you,
you don't know my middle name,
I feel like I have to beg to be with you,
you'll never read this poem because it's so tiny and insignificant,
and my heart's going to break any day now
but I'd still ask you to pick up the pieces for me.