As a college freshman
I find myself time traveling.
I close my eyes and
I appear
in the classroom where a group
of over-confident, lazy, too smart
for their own **** good
students stood on the precipice
between leaving and staying
regretting and dreaming.
Leaving would give us freedom
Leaving would fill the creases of
our palms with sweat
We kept our palms outstretched and empty
not daring to grasp anymore of home
because the weight would only
anchor us to the vines
we spent 13 years unraveling from
our ankles.

Maybe we should not have been
so eager to leave, maybe this is a mistake.

The girl with the mermaid hair
The boy with books stacked in
a corner of his desk
They both, we all, sat dreaming
about the same thing while
Ophelia drowned herself in the river
Shores of the ocean and city skylines
Classrooms that did not feel like cages
and eyes that did not reflect a memory
every time you glanced into them
In a high school English class,
a group of over-confident, lazy, too smart
for their own **** good students,
stood terrified and mystified
stood united in there persistence to become
something more than test scores and
the ability to memorize facts.

Fact:
Some mornings I walk to class
and I can feel the girl with the mermaid hair in Los Angeles
walking beside me and when I sit down
I can see books stacked on a corner of a desk somewhere in Berkeley.
I wonder if they wake in their bed and hear airplane engines roaring
somewhere above a valley.
The engines roar with warning.
sometimes it sounds like hope.
Baby, something is coming, we promise

We all began at the start,
dreaming as one and fearing as one
Today, she is five spaces forward
He is ten spaces forward
The others are halfway down the **** board
and I find myself back at the start
every few weeks.
Four spaces forward then three spaces back--
I don't know where I am going.
But I know where I have been.

I open my eyes.
A college freshman.
I hear the engines roar above me.
*Something is coming.

I was born on a Sunday.
My eyes change colors
depending on the weather.
I am 5' 2'' but feel like I am 5' 6".
I don't know how to do Calculus.
I am okay with that.

My first name means "one who listens".
I wish my middle name meant "one who speaks"
because my God, I am a wishing well
and people have the tendency to toss
their secrets into me. And their loss, their pain,
their anger, their sadness, their regret
it fills up a part of me that I thought was infinite.
I am on the constant verge of spilling over and
when I walk I feel like a garbage bag, dragged
against cement, one sidewalk scrape away
from coming undone. I am expected to keep
everyone's mess inside.

My friends tend give me **** for the amount of
time I can spend staring in the mirror.
The secret here isn't that I'm vain,
it's that approaching my reflection is like
ripping off a band-aid because looking
myself in the eye still makes my stomach flip.
60 pounds of weight lost does not
silence the echoes of words that
convinced me that life as a size zero
was the only life worth living and
I had been alive nine sizes too long.
I can't always remember that I am beautiful.

And I have this collection
of words that I should
have said. When I am alone,
I bring them out from
my closet and introduce
them to the ghosts of
people I have lost,
of the people I could not fix,
of the people I should forget
but can't forget because I
don't want to forget because
there's something about keeping
wounds open that feels better
than letting them heal—
I have always been one to pick at scabs.

This is my declaration of honesty—

My name is Sam.
I can't ride a bike
but I can write you a poem.
I am afraid of perpetually falling
in love with people who won't  love me back.
There is a man in a cell I live to forget.
I am convinced Heaven looks like Ireland
and that soul mates come in multiples.
My voice shakes when I say what I think.
and for once,
this poem isn't for you.

This is a poem for me.

I look in the mirror
I can only see pieces.
You have taken so much of me, darling.
There are holes the shape of your hands
all over my body.
Big and gaping.
I don't remember what I look like without them.

You were real.
I had fallen in love with words
in a letter before.
With promises made
over telephone lines
thousands of miles apart.  
You were real.
Skin and bones.
Big hands and blue eyes.
For six months
I fell asleep to your voice.
I don't sleep much anymore.

We were just friends.
You didn't want me
but you gave me the stars
and your lips and those
hands--******* those hands.
You didn't want commitment
but if I could have just kept your mouth
on my mouth and my legs around
your waist
If I could have kept you
in the backseat of your car
If I could have made the stars
hang in the sky forever
If I—
I didn't want to fall in love with you.
You should have never held my hand.
You should have stayed.

There's a sad boy who loves me now.
We're just friends
but I give him my body and sometimes
when I close my eyes, his hands
feel like yours.
I don't tell him I love him.
He knows I couldn't.
The sad understand—
we only love the ones
who can't love us back.

At night,
my fingers itch and
I write you letters
you will never read.
It's always the same
two sentences:
*Never tell a sad girl
you love her.
She won't believe you
until you leave her.

My sister told me once,
"Everything between men
and women is a game"
I never understood
what she meant—until
I met you. Back and forth,
we play to see how far
we can push our boundaries
without breaking. Tonight
you can make me blush but
tomorrow you will be
up all night replaying
my hand on your chest.
They say love is our favorite game.
But baby, this was never about love.

This is about boredom,
this is entertainment.
This is a constant fight
for the upper-hand.
There are only two ways
this will end:

I.
I will fall a little in love with you.
Instead of a game, you will become
a puzzle. I'll start believing
your edges fit with mine and
I will hate myself for letting this happen again.
Because I have done this before,
I always feel too much for
people who do not feel anything
at all. I am the girl that's great
for marking time. Quick remarks,
a smirk, a laugh that is too loud—
I am neon lights and for now
you can't look away but eventually
your eyes will get tired and you
will fall in love with a girl
who looks like candlelight
.
II.
I will push you away.
I will hate you for making
me another stop on the way
to a destination
and you'll hate me for ruining
our game because this was supposed
to be fun, this was supposed to
be a boost to your ego,
a way to pass time.
But you will get over it
because girls like me are disposable
and you will replace me before
I get the chance to say I'm sorry.
I'm sorry we can't be friends that
flirt without me getting hurt I'm sorry
I can't be all fun and no commitment I'm sorry
you can't fall in love with me I'm sorry
my heart always gets in the way
You will be fine.
I won't be able to look at you.

So you see,
this is game of ours isn't fair.
You don't deserve to
feel like the bad guy
and I shouldn't let myself
get hurt again. I know I should
stop this before we get to far in but
baby, I couldn't quit
even if you asked me to.
Because my fear of losing,
my fear of getting hurt doesn't
matter because my hope,
that maybe you could be different,
that maybe you could fall in love
with me, is bigger than the fear
of losing a game.

While we play this back and forth,
please remember that
I'm not trying to get hurt.
I'm just a girl who tries
so hard and is never the one--
but would rather play and lose
then not play at all.

I know I don't make sense.
But the game is more fun
that way, isn't it?
Please just don't stop.
Smile at me,
touch me,
look at me,
that way you do—
our game
has only just begun.

I stood at the shoreline
and I
didn't feel anything
I wanted to feel small,
I wanted to yearn for the horizon.
She was walking into the waves,
my mother would later tell my father
She was asking to be swept away
I was asking to be swept away
When the waves crashed
into me, the water stung
my skin
a thousand needles
but I didn't flinch
The sea pushed me away,
tried to knock me off my feet,
and return me to land
where I belonged,
Take me with you
I stroked the water,
and begged the sea
Please, please
I prayed for waves
that would be strong enough,
cold enough,
violent enough
to make me feel like someone else.
I would not survive in the sea
but I could not survive on land.

I left.
I drove back to a city that was not ours.
In a town miles away,
someone said my name and you forgot
to hate the sound. Your fiancée
feels like an ocean wave and when you kiss
you can feel water crash against your neck.
Her hands wash over you until you are someone new.

My best friend told me
Someday you will meet someone
who will make you forget
I have not met any ocean waves.
Only deserts who make you appear like a mirage.
Vast and empty, I grow tired trying to fill you in their spaces.

I want to save myself.
I do not want to need someone to make me forget.
I want time and tears and months of not remembering
to be enough--
Why am I not enough?

When I dream I can forget who I am
but I can not forget your face.
So I stand on shorelines begging
*Please.

Look at me –
we are in this room
in this house
on a night where
you are bored and lonely
and want to prove that you can
have skin on skin,
lips against your neck,
her purring your name,
and I know how this works-
you look at me,
eyes half open,
and I look like the stars
but look at me,
I am no constellation.
I am the OPEN sign
blinking, half-lit,
on a motel lobby door.

I'm fun for the night.
All quick comebacks
and a ****-me smirk.
Everything I say sounds
like a challenge that
I, by the end of the night,
will have you dying to
accept – because between
the tequila and the beer
and the fact that at least
I am a body,
tell me you won't say no.

I am not stupid.
If this is happening
it is because I am letting it.
So go ahead, tell me
that I am beautiful,
that you want me,
pull me into you
and kiss me on the forehead,
let me think that you care
and I promise I will let
myself believe it.

But don't think about,
do not even think about,
thinking about me the next day.
Because I am one-time use and
toss kind of woman. I am not
the kind of girl that guys love.
If I learned anything,
in twenty years,
it's that I am not an investment.
I am a novelty.

I can no longer stand to fight facts.
This is my white flag to the Universe.
Because pretending to be something you
are not is a pain worse than
the ache of knowing.

I am no a constellation.

Evolution echoes
in the hollows
of the guarding oak tree.
Salvation in it’s roots,
intertwined like fingers in prayer.
Possibilities outline
hillside silhouettes.
Paper-thin illusions
are found in textured walls.
The flicker of the street-lamp
matches the pulse of my heartbeat,
and the shadow on the asphalt
color the hue of my dreams.
Rooftops and light-bulb skies
paint me temporary.
The contradiction of leaving
to staying
throbs.

I.
When you sleep
your spine curls
like a question mark
and there's always
too much space.

II.
You lay alone,
belly down on your bed.
You can't breathe
and you don't mean
to but you cry out,
arms wrapped around
your body,
clutching your sides.
You fall apart.

III.
You want to scream.
You want to scream
because it hurts.
You're empty
and everything aches.
You're tired of trying
and waiting and
waiting and waiting
and always
going to bed alone.

IV.
It is a never-ending prayer.
In the back of your mind,
it plays like a soundtrack.
Please, please, please, please.

V.
They say it happens when
you least expect it.
You wonder if you can
use reverse-psychology
on the Universe.

VI.
You'll fall in love
with every man
who looks at you
without turning away.
Every touch
from any stranger
electrifies you.
You still feel it
three
days
later.

VII.
You write letters
to the Universe.
Sometimes you're
angry but usually
you're just broken.
You're always asking
*why?

She looked at him,
her anger was the wind
that swept across her forehead
the way his lips had
done before and the sun that blinded her
was the vision of his fingertips
on someone else’s collarbone and
she couldn’t look away from
what blinded her.
But her eyes burned and
he was the sun or was he destruction
and she couldn’t think because he was himself
but she was not her and together they were
the wind that rattled her brain.
He looked at her as she shook her head,
was he the earthquake that made her
tremble or was it the reverberation
of his words that made her unstable?
He could see fault-lines form across her chest,
he traced them, he read them but could not understand
because he was not the same and yesterday she was not her and
now he was not himself. She was a tree,
he was flames, together they were chaos
They were insanity and sense
and he told her she felt like the roots of a redwood but
someone else had felt like the stars.
Flames made the stars burn brighter and he couldn’t be destruction.
She showed him the ashes in her eyes and the embers on her skin,
she asked if that was not what he couldn’t be.
Silence answered her and she turned away
to find a storm
to baptize her new.

Darling,
the world is on fire.

We are Jack and Rose
and the inevitable destruction of our world,
perhaps this, is our iceberg.

And it’s just like the scene in the movie,
(Oh love, you know the one)
Jack puts Rose on the life boat
because he wants to save her –
Rose leaps back onto a sinking ship
because she cannot be saved without him.

This is not a movie,
but there is a pit in my stomach
and whether I am to fight or fly
I do not know but,
I do know I want to be with you.
You jump, I jump.
You fall, I fall.
We are only safe as one.

Darling,
please
do not leave me in this world alone –

*Look,
it comes this way.

Tell me about the bridge.

So far up,
baby, I know
you think you are invincible.
Alcohol and stardust
run through you and
nothing hurts you anymore.
You don't need anyone.
These days you feel nothing besides
the bottle sweating in your hand—
the less you feel the better.

This is how you live.
This is how you survive
in the world that you didn't choose,
but sure as hell chose you.

Nothing will break you.
Nothing nothing nothing
nothing—tell me again
what you don't need.  
God ******, you aren't
even fooling yourself.

So, tell me about the bridge.

You said you were fine.

You are beautiful.

Do not roll your eyes at me.
I see you.
You have never been kissed.
Boys treat you like you are contagious
and at night the popular girl's laughter
rings in your mind like an alarm clock—
you do not sleep very much.
You are nebulas and dark holes,
purple and black.
Do you not understand my metaphor?
I know what you do at night.
In the mirror you try to destroy
pieces of you that make people hate you.
That make you hate you.
Pinch and pull and twist
squeeze and squeeze,
squeeze your eyes shut—
bruises do not look better in the dark.

I know you.
So listen to me when I tell you:
Do not let years of your life
become a blur of starving
and binging starving and binging
starving and binging.
Do not form an addiction
to the growl of your stomach.
Do not wear your clothes
like an apology.
When your weight is the classroom guessing game,
when a hug from a boy is the result of a triple-dog dare,
when the girls draw pictures of you on bathroom stalls,
do not think of the peace that never waking up could bring.
Do not give up.

I am you
and I know what I am talking about.
Seven years, one eating disorder, and 50 pounds later,
I will always be in recovery
and you are still who I see in the mirror.
I am sorry I did not love you.

But trust me now,
this body is not your prison,
it is a home.
You are made of stardust
and sea water and of the
earth beneath you.
You are more than a number--
you are not as simple
as they want you to be.

I did not love you,

I do not love you.

But I have forty unsent letters

hidden between my books.

No one takes the time to write

letters but I have taken hours

for you.



You were my greatest story—

The boy who lived life fast,

who made sure to never get

what he wanted.

He left everything broken.



There was a girl.

He used to make her laugh.

Now she hated him, she avoided him

but he knew she still searched for him.

Most days she would turn away

but some days she would see him

and walk past him like she could

not see him.

He wondered if she cared

or did not care at all. He did not care

enough to find out.

He lost this girl.

He saw a glimpse of her face, a shadow

on the concrete and watched her

walk away for the last time.

He did not feel

anything.



My greatest story:

The boy who did not care

about the girl who cared so much.



I do not love you,

I did not love you.

Last month I threw away forty letters.

I have grown tired of trying to spin

fiction into fact.

I look into his eyes.
You are not here.
You are miles away
and I am  holding an open call audition.
WANTED:
A boy who does not drink
like he has something to prove.
A boy who has more than words to offer.

He leans in.
Tonight I don't back away.
We are outside,
bodies and bodies and bodies
surrounding us, dancing
around us, and I wonder
if you thought of me when
you stood here with her.

I close my eyes and try
not to pretend he is you:
Try to think of the stars,
think of the smoke escaping from the garage,
think of the eyes watching you,
think of the sweat dripping down to the dip of your back,
think of the whisky ignited in your chest—
I think of the way you smiled
when I called you pobrecito.

He kisses me.
I sway back and
he pulls our hips together.
I have not stopped missing you
in three months.
I was wrong.
His mouth changes nothing.
I still want you.
I think I hear my heart crack
but that might just be the beer bottles
shattering under our feet.

I put my hand on his chest
and push him away.
This was supposed to be us.
He was supposed to be you.
But you don't care about me
and when you kiss her,
your mind doesn't form poems.
You think about the friends
you will describe this moment to later.
When your lips leave her neck,
there is no metaphor.
The bruises are just bruises.

I walk away
and it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
My lips were numb anyway--
I didn't feel a thing.

WANTED:
A boy who drinks like he has something to prove.

I want tell him he is enough.

Dear Baby,
at this moment
I am 22 and you
are just an idea –
a twinkle in my eye.
But my dear twinkle,
even just as you are,
you must know this:
there are great things
that make this existence of ours
worth experiencing.
Poetry Beauty Romance
Love
Oh captain, my captain
These are what we stay alive for.

Now let me tell you a story, mi lunita
and may you be born with a mind filled with love
romance
beauty
poetry.

Once upon a time,
I met your papi for the first time
in a dream –
of this I am certain.
I stood in front of my friends and family
in a room of heavenly white.
I remember the curve of papi’s shoulder
in his nicest black suit. I remember
vows being whispered in my ear
and the way the light looked behind my eyelids.

I know this was your papi for two reasons:
1.) He is the only man I have loved
that would think to whisper marriage vows
– creating a secret, just for us.
Our love has always been just for us.
Private.
Sacred.
Why do they have to know everything?

2.). On our first date,
I opened the door
and in a burgundy shirt
red carnations in hand,
was your papi.
His lips were shaped like the Amen
to my whole life’s prayer
and I couldn’t stop myself from
embracing him.

So often, baby
your body remembers
what your soul has seen
but your mind has long forgotten.

Listen, my love
Find the quiet.
Feel your soul settled into you.
There is so much to remember.

Mi lunita,
*I remember you.

things you said to me while drunk

1. I remember all of our moments.
2. I'm very…generous.
3. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
4. It's our first time.
5. We're going to my room.
6. You aren't drunk enough.
7. Good night, Sam.



things I said to you while drunk**
1. Come over.
2. I'm not trying to ****** you.
3. I guess we will…
4. I was just trying to be nice.
5. It doesn't matter.
6. You have a problem.
7. I think I miss you.

I can't remember when
we stopped chasing each other.
Now you don't know me and I
can't recognize you anymore.
Did we decide to stop caring
or did it happen
the same way the leaves fall from trees?
A natural progression.

You see,
after I decided I couldn't risk
being something someone could stop loving
and you decided you didn't want to try to love me,
we still revolved around each other for months.
For months
we shared the same world,
living on different sides of the same reality;
parallel lines—always in sight
but never touching.

Your light has faded from my universe,
and I only see you now in glimpses.
You are the flicker of flame in between trees. I can see you
but I can not stop you from destruction. I can see
you but I can not touch you.

Look,
I only want you to be happy.
That is what everyone says
but now I know why.
When you can't be the one
to give someone light,
you would do anything
to save them from the dark.

I know I can not save you.
but I promise—
you can save yourself.

When I was 16
I thought love was a miracle.
Stars aligning and a lightning strike.
I just had to wait,
be in the right place -
a classroom, a gym class, a Target -
and my hair and my body and my acne and  and my teeth and my body and my body and my body,
wouldn't matter.
I would know what it felt like
to be happy.

When I was 18
I thought love was a cure.
I developed an aching.
A gnawing emptiness;
and I couldn't tell where I began anymore.
Like a moss on a rock,
sadness made my body a home and
my tears kept it growing.
Growing,
Growing-
gone.
I was tragedy
and love, of course Love,
would save me.

When I was 20
I thought love was a game.
I fell in love with a someone
who never wanted to love me.
The pain was...
excruciating -
and I had never felt more alive.
It was the thrill of strategy, you see.
Get a little skinnier,
buy a better bra,
send drunk texts that you
can blame on blacking out,
flirt with other men,
touch other men,
kiss other men,
lay with other men.
Lose yourself in other men.
Lose the game.
I learned that love was never meant
for playing.

When I met you
I thought love was fear.
Loving you was
like holding a butterfly
too tight - killing it
when you were only
trying to keep it safe.
You, you, you,
beautiful and honest and fierce,
you loved me like answering a prayer.
I loved you like a nightmare.
The fear was suffocating.
and we had to die
before I could wake.
Honey,
I am awake now.

Today I love you
and this love is
river water flowing,
even breathing.
Steady.
Love is trust.
(Don't mind my shaking hands, darling.
I'm not scared, this is just a reflex.)
You are the definition of risk and reward and I do love you so.
I love you determined, I love you brave, I love you happily.
You are the calm and the reality and the quiet observer andthe  hand to hold.
I am the hurricane and the optimist and the hand-shaker and the declaration of love.
We are not the same but
I am 22 and,
I think
I believe
I know,
we are love.

Tell me about the stars.
Do you see your brother's eyes?
Your mother's smile?
Do you admire the dark
or the light that shines despite it?

2.
When I was in the fourth grade,
when neither of us could sleep,
my father and I snuck out of the house
and took a drive.
With a hand on the steering wheel,
and his other intertwined with mine,
I looked to the sky and
he told me:
Baby, someday you'll meet
someone and you'll realize our
homes are not always houses.

3.
Hold my hand and
I could be a home for you.
You walk through life like you
need nothing from no one.
If you let me, I would be someone.
I would be anyone for you.

4.
I once read that we
were created from stardust.
Beautiful boy, if this is true,
you must come from a supernova.
In the mirror
can you see how bright you shine?
Your fingertips have left me illuminated
and my spine has grow accustomed to the
constant shiver running miles up and down
up and down up and down up and—
Oh darling,
tell me the sun is no competition for my stars.
Hover you hand over my belly,
can you feel it?
I have been burning for you
for years.

5.
Don't you understand?
You are the light in the dark,
the stars in the sky.
Per aspera ad astra--
Through hardship to the stars
You are on your way home.

I miss you.

Another year
has passed me by
and you
are nowhere to be found.

I want to believe you
are out there.
Map and compass in hand,
on a ship,
stranded on an island,
wandering a city
on the other side of the country,
trying to find your way
back to me.

Because we've done this before.
In a hundred different lives,
we've found each other,
we've fallen in love,
and we've promised forever.
So someday,
you will find me
and it will feel like
remembering.

You'll know
you've never met
me but you'll be
certain you have
loved me.
I promise you that.

And if in this life
we do not meet,
please know,
I will spend
all of my days
missing you.

I.
You made me happy
when skies were grey,
when skies were blue,
when skies were purple
and orange and pink
and looked like a promise,
when skies were dark
and were shining with wishes—
You made me happy.

II.
When I couldn't sleep
I replayed the way
you said my name
over and over and over.
It rang in my head
like a police car's siren.

III.
In between being asleep
and awake my mind
would flash back to the night
where in a drunken haze,
time stopped.
Do you remember
the way you looked at me?
Could you tell that I
couldn't breathe?
The air was thick
with everything we weren't
saying and I wonder—do you
remember?
When your mind is
most vulnerable,
do you think of me?

IV.
You smiled at me
like you loved me
and stared at me like
I was a mystery you wanted to spend
your whole life figuring out
and said my name like
it was sacred
and these things should've
made more sense.
These things
should have meant
more.

V.
In one night
we went from
almost something
to absolutely nothing.
In two sentences
you let me
let you go.

You were supposed
to come
back.

VI.
Everything hurts me.
The way you
wouldn't look at me.
The way you
spat words at me,
like every syllable
burned your lips
on the way out of
your mouth.
The way you
let me walk out
the door without
a second glance.

We weren't meant to hurt each other like this.

VII.
I cried for months.
In bed,
on a park bench,
sitting on a patio at night,
perched on the sink of a public restroom,
with my feet floating in a fountain,
over the phone to a voice, hundreds of miles away.

I cried for months.

VIII.
I want you to know,
it mattered to me.
Even if I meant nothing to you,
you mattered.

VIV.
I've never been very good at letting go.
God knows how hard I try.
I'm sorry it is taking me so long.
I'm sorry I can't look at you still
I'm sorry I have to ignore you but
it easier this way.

Some nights I don't sleep because
what if I can't let you go,
what if time goes on
and I meet someone new
and regardless of moons
and suns and other men's mouths,
I still want you?

I told you,
I am not good at letting go.
My mind is not one to allow it.

X.
I could have loved you.

I'm sorry.

Something in your voice
makes me want to stay.
You feel like a first kiss,
and I don't know
if I will ever be able to
reach for you without
my hands shaking.

I kneel at your cathedral doors,
my kingdom of milk and honey.
This love is sweet - should I consume it
I will take a spoonful,
a mouthful and oh my,
it will be divine.

My darling, I curl around you when sleeping;
I crave not just you
but the entirety of the space in which you exist.

Kiss my lips, don’t you taste it?
Sugar.
Syrup.
Caramel.
*Sweet.

Some nights I dream
in silent movie sequences.
Y en este mundo sin lengua
amor es el accion solamente.

This is why you are always saving me
in black and white dreams
and I-
I am always running away.

I don’t want to hurt you but,
darling,
I am the monster in your closet
and the audience is screaming:

Don’t save her -

Run.

Don’t love her -

Run.

Can’t you see?
The monster is in bed next to you.

Answer my call
For you are the wild one
I search for in any open crowd
No map or compass can guide me -
you are within me
as I am you and,
you are me and so we
are love
e v e r l a s t i n g
evergreen
you are
everything
Can you hear me?
Can you feel me?
I am with you

Heavenly Mother,
Our Lady,
La Virgen ,
oh Mary,
it’s me -
a woman made in your image.
They say I was born a vessel of healing -
a product of divine selection -
and like you,
there is no separating from this blessing.

Men fall in love with me like I am salvation,
and I feel too small to carry their pain.
Mary, how did you protect your heart,
your energy, your magic?
I am not a savior

Mi amor, no soy una santa,
I hold the hands of men and try to explain,
I can’t ignore their pain,
and I feel everything but please,
—Mary, can you stop them
from throwing roses at your feet?
Mary,
do you love them all?

Romeo told Juliet,
Oh dear saint, let lips do what hands do
and he kissed her like a prayer
but she was just sixteen yet
destined to carry Romeo’s prayers -
destined to hold the sins purged from his kiss, his touch, his body,
forever outside of him and always within her.

I can not be any man’s saint.
I am just a woman.

Are you there?
Mary —

To the only man I could never write poetry for -
I’m sorry and I love you and
I wish I could invent a new language
and create every word I need
to describe how I feel for you.

I wrote so many love poems
for boys I did not love.
The metaphors and feeling -
just red flag warnings
I painted to appear as roses.
I wish I would have saved
every sacred word for you.

You tell me you love me
and the words drip like honey -
sweet and sticking to my memory.
You and I will be crystallized in this moment,
forever present in the forefront of my mind.

Part 1

We fell in love without meaning to -
Or, maybe we meant to.
It was one of those experiences,
where your body knows something before your soul does,
and suddenly you’re in front of a beautiful boy
who you can’t stay away from,
who doesn’t want to stay away from you.
And my god, we’re Persephone and Hades.

No, I don’t think you are the devil.
But, you were the darkness -
all ****** knuckles, scars, and broken spirit.
You collected pain like baseball cards,
Here’s my mother who abandoned me,
Here’s the first girl who broke my heart,
Here’s the woman who used to hit me,
Here and here and here and here -
I wanted to press my lips to your hands,
and whisper prayers into your palm lines,
so you’d have them with you when I…
Well, when I could not be with you.

Part 2

Like Persephone,
I could not stay with you.
I am yours today but not tomorrow, darling.
And after staying and going, staying and going, you asked me to stand still with you.
Be mine today and forever after.
You offered yourself as my home,
your heart as my salvation.
Just don’t go back.
But, you see, I couldn’t let go of the world I left.
Or rather, I couldn’t let go of who I left.
So, I told you, Next time. Please, darling,
don’t be angry. I promise to return.
I did not return,
and eventually, I could not return.

I broke your heart
and I was banished back to the Light.
I took your Dark for granted.
With you, I found balance -
I had, for once, peace of mind.
I don’t always want to shine
and my God, I miss your shadows.

I don’t have to be the Stars for you, darling,
just let me be the flame of a candle,
happy to glow in your presence.
Darling, I know,
I should have kept my promise.
I should have stayed.

In our first life you were the moon
and I was the ocean
and God knows it’s you
who moves me still.
It was never just love for us,
it has always been
gravity.

Baby,
I spent lifetimes loving you from afar.
So when you say you must leave,
my heart does not break once -
it breaks for each form in which
I could not feel you next to me.
Moon and ocean,
Tristan and Isolde,
every star-crossed love
was me and you and
I will not be tragedy again.

Stay with me, darling.
Love me today and every day after
in our sheets, in our home, in our city.
I bargained for this chance
on each deathbed of mine:
Dear father, who art in heaven,
please bring me back once more,
and I promise,
this time I will be different.
Give me this, my only prayer.
Let me love him close,
all the days of my life.

Do you understand now?
I was born knowing you
and I grew trying to find you,
And I will be yours -
whether you stay or go.

I will belong to you
hoping
you will stay.

Depression wrote me a love letter
His handwriting looks just like Death’s

•

See,
our love is a secret and it is an instant escape.
He can take me anywhere
but I have to be alone first,
I have to be asleep first.
It has to be just us.

He said he loves me and he has to,
he has to protect me from everyone else -everyone but him.
If I want I can be with him forever, but

It’s just for me, somewhere only I can go.

No, the promise land isn’t Heaven
but if I could be rid of this Earthly existence then perhaps even Hell could be paradise.

My path emerges: clean cut
Cut deeper, cut longer, cut -
maybe God can’t hear me
maybe God can see me — see this

•

I don’t want to be in love with Depression
but he seduced me into a belief:
only he and I exist -
So how do I stop loving the only part of me that I can still see?

Tell me you can still see me, God.
Can you see all of me?

Am
      I
       still
              here?