103rd Street / Watts Towers

Suicide help lines posted
on signs above the train tracks
make her wonder where the
stars went make her wonder
what she’d do if
someone near her jumped

Decided she ain’t tryna
save a life, she just tryna
stay alive

Vernon

Little girl with big bright eyes,
do your troubles have a name?
Little girl your kicks are sticking
to the pavement. Do you ever watch
the planes at night?

They’ll try to tell you otherwise but
you don’t gotta unstick yourself.
In the City of Angels someone’s bound
to get caught in the smog layer.

7th Street / Metro Center

She looks for you in ****-soaked
alleys, on rusted fire escapes, behind
buildings flashing neon green crosses,
a sort of salvation — together you’re
the most perfect covenant.

Does she tell you that enough?

Pershing Square*

There’s no such thing as dreaming
here, and you get used to that.
You get used to everything.
When you’re flying over Angel’s Knoll
it’s easy to forget how far you are
from Hollywood, same city same jungle,
the only place with hundreds of stars
on the sidewalk but hardly any
in the sky.

put the key in the ignition, the car into drive, and all your gross post-*** insecurities to the back of your mind. forget you don’t have a license. forget she’s asleep in the bed that knows your panic attacks like they’re a late-night tv special and roll out onto the road - don’t hit the neighbor’s buick - drive. drive.

take the route you used to sneak over to your boyfriend’s house in 7th grade. feel the ghosts of his hungry pubescent hands under your bra, get that old lump in your throat, wish you could go back in time and scream that you weren’t ready and that you’d never be ready and that one day you’ll be seventeen driving down his street hating the way he used to own you. remember that his street is also your street. remember that you’re worth owning things too.

pass by the house your best friend used to live in, back when summers meant hot cheetos and horchata instead of cigarettes and cheap sangria. pray that one day you’ll be that way again, happy and fearless and okay with being alone. scold yourself for praying.

forget where you’re going until your stomach growls and the road gets narrow. then keep driving.

bone is bone is bone
is bone.
my hands are forever too tiny,
my hips forever too big,
and you forever the girl
who’s always wanted to leave.
when we first met you talked of
hating the palm trees seventy degrees
traffic clogged grit and smog,
graffiti covered rat sewers
mansions dotting all the hills
and everything else i’ve ever loved.
i reminded myself that some people
need more than a place with
hundreds of stars on the sidewalk
but hardly any in the sky.
when i think of superpowers
i imagine being strong enough
to carry manhattan to you on my
shoulders and all your rain clouds
in my arms.
if you ever turned fragile i would
arrange a fortress out of skyscrapers
big enough to cover all the hills,
and with tiny hands i’d point
to the clouds and make them fill
the sky outside your window;
white as bone, as bone,
as bone.

i just turned 17 and i bought a ****** e-cig
off some guy in venice.
it squeaks when i try to use it
and the vapor scares my cat,
and i’m in love with this girl who tried it
while she was tangled up in my sheets —
she said she hated it but hey,
i just turned 17 and i can’t be the only kid
in this city who doesn’t need a nicotine fix.
on thursday nights i stand outside coffee shops
with the ones who smoke those reds
and blues and velvet blacks
that come in wooden boxes like fine cigars.
i hate that scene but i’m addicted to it
because i just turned 17 and everything
about me is being reshaped like play-doh.
my mom calls it impressionable, i call it fearless.
i just turned 17 and i’d like to think i’m not as insecure
as i feel, but i had to move the full-length mirror
out of my room and nothing i do counts
unless i put it on instagram.
i just turned 17 and that’s the age all the
songs are about, the year of dancing queens
and cheap red wine and sneaking through
the suburbs to get to your girlfriend’s house.
i used to think i wanted to see the world but
i just turned 17 and i can’t stop falling in love
with the city i live in —
you can’t see too many stars here but it feels
safer that way, like i’m less likely to float into space.
tethered is a good thing to be,
at least until all the different parts of me
finally get strung together.
i just turned 17 and i’m scared the nicotine
can’t hide that i’m just a work in progress.

i want you to be here when
i’m no longer soft and beautiful.
i want you to stay for when
my voice slips out of itself
and into another, when the crescent moons
of my body turn stubborn and rigid
and my chest is gutted, stitched, sculpted
like marble like artwork like a chiseled
gravestone reading “here lies your golden girl,
basked in till her light changed hues.”
stay until all my cells have been replaced
and i look at you with different eyes,
hold you with different arms.
this body is changing for my today
but staying for your tomorrow.

1.
you said falling in love would be
that breath before the fanfare,
that clap of thunder that starts
at the timpani and catches in
the space between the horn
and your fingertips
before sending soundsparks shooting
down the finished brass.
you said it’d be counting measures.
said i’d feel it at my core like
the first chord after two-for-nothing,
something crashing through me
same as a conductor’s stick;
one and two and one and two
and one, two, three, four.
instead it tasted like stale
cigarettes and the halfbreath
you only remember to take
after the orchestra has started
without you.
2.
i’ve been trying to remind you
of when we waltzed to minor chords
in our best friend’s basement —
his piano fingers were rusting away
so all we said was keep it steady,
keep it three-four.
you danced out of time
and stepped on my toes but
by the end i was still reciting
"i’ll do better next time,"
one, two, three, one, two.
3.
when you weren’t looking
i circled all the fermatas
on your sheet music.
you found out and said
i didn’t have to,
you could remember
on your own.

1.
it was my first cigarette
in weeks that i hadn’t found
half-smoked on the asphalt
and it still tasted like something
leftover from somewhere
i don’t belong;
its smoke drifted through
the evening city mist like
how our voices used to harmonize
but only when we weren’t trying.

2.
on the blue line through
south central i heard someone
say “i could’ve been president
of the whole world, could’ve
taught y’all something about
success” —
she wasn’t talking to nobody
but the whole train listened
and in that, she taught me
more than any textbook
ever could.

3.
when you stand on 5th
and san pedro you can’t see
nothing besides the cliff
at the end of the world,
but instead of clouds there’s
puddles of ****, instead of
waterfalls there’s shopping carts
filled with people’s whole lives
and everyone down there is
shaking their heads at you —
leave, leave unless you know
what falling feels like.

the storybooks never prepared you
for someone like me.
i am neither knight nor maiden
but i can try to be both,
can try to drape myself in
armor while i wait for you  
to rescue me.
you’re digging through me for
your hero and your beacon
but all you’ll find is questions
and contradictions; a game of
mix-and-match between
what’s pounding in my head
and coursing through my body;
a constant war between
what i need and what i’m given
and baby, this is no man’s land.
watch where you step.

i’m trying to paint you
a picture.
your hair is draping onto
my chest and scattering
eternities over all my
drawbacks and i’m
wishing they would soak
into me and leave me
tethered. i’m wondering if
you see mountains in me
the way i see moonlight
in you or if i’m still
taking you in from
sea level and i’m realizing
that your glow will light
my alleyways home
no matter where i am.
stay suspended with me
for a little while longer -
gravity seems to have
lost his way to us.

a jazz club in new orleans,
late evening.
the girl who grinned at me from
behind the bassist has
oysters on her breath and
hints of my lipstick still smeared
around her neck,
but i won’t tell her.
i’ll let her forget me like
she forgets the rest of them,
then notice the shy little
smudges from the other side
of her vanity and wish that
her familiar bourbon street boys
knew how to let their fingertips
slide down her spine the way
mine did.
the timing’s got nothing to
do with it. my ghost is lingering
on the skin of anyone who has
ever tested (swam in, drowned
in) these waters.
they’re playing “bye bye blackbird"
and she’s forgetting already.
i’m letting her. the remembering
comes once i’m lost at
sea.

she said i only love the
enticing parts of people,
the same way i highlight
my favorite lines in books
so i’ll have something to
focus on when i decide
to blow the dust off their
spines.
you’re missing everything
and you know it and
you don’t care,
she said.
you’re missing the real
parts. you’re cheating people
out of themselves.

even then, i wanted to
quote her.

i met a man in a church
outside of manila
who asked how i could stand
living in a country so cold.
amerika, he said,
felt wrong to me.
he asked if it was
cold still.
if it still felt like the land
wanted to stick *******
down its throat and throw me up
and up and away. and gone.

not the land. i wanted to say
not the land but this dress, ginoo,
this body and this name
and what you’ve gotta understand
is that there is no flight to someplace
warmer when the cold is etched
into your chromosomes.

but the only words i could
speak in his tongue
were yes, it’s cold,
yes.

it goes like this,
i said.
the singer finds the quiet one.
they run through sprinklers and
hold their breath under tunnels
and roll the windows down when
their favorite songs come on.
they drink midnight coffee
at diners meant for the old
and alone, and make pictures
across the table with packets
of sugar. together they decide
that the best word is petrichor,
the smell of dirt after it rains,
and when the lights come on
at christmastime they sit in
the trees and watch greens
and reds throw patterns
across their skin.
all of it is perfect
and none of it makes sense.

you said but what about
the singer? you said
what about her songs?

"without _, neither love
nor lovers can survive."
the answer was money,
but i think it should be
the wide-eyed gasps
that come right after
stay-here-forever kisses,
or the foggy half-second
of sprinting through a sun-
drenched forest in between
waking up and realizing
i’m in your arms.
the bills and coins can
sprout wings and fly away —
there’s no such thing as homeless
as long as you’re around.

it started with the
collapsing, or the almost-
collapsing and sprinting to
catch her and
something about a
brain tumor and wanting to
screamscream scream
but not being able to
because i have to be
the strong one now.
she could still hardly
walk when she
said that she wanted to
look at the
stars, so
i said no. i said
you’ll fall.
she looked at
me like i had
just rearranged her
entire universe
and said, more with
her eyes than with
her mouth, that
i wouldn’t let her.

what you know is flash cards
and laptop screens and college
applications. what you know is
who’s sleeping with who
and who wants to sleep with
you and what you know is
how to live through independent
films or how to fake an ******
or how to talk trash about
the people you (quote) love (endquote).
you don’t know about
the starving man under the bridge
who can talk for hours about
richard wagner, or how the girl
who sells her art on the street
has a boyfriend who beats her
then makes her shade his drawings.
you don’t know about
the abandoned building bursting
with sharpied revelations across
its walls or that when the sun sets
over the green line it’s almost
like the tracks disappear
and you’re left to glide over
hollywood dreams well past
their expiration date.
you don’t know this place.
you don’t know.

keep your ******* wanderlust
away from my skyline.

i’ll never be your
tall dark and handsome your
captain of the
football team your strong perfect
arms and scruffy unshaven
face i’ll never give you a  
six pack underneath an unbuttoned
dress shirt
because i can hardly
unbutton my shirt without
wanting to tear my chest into
shreds — tumors on my chest,
massive lumps of fat and
anger and wrongness,
i can give you those and
i can give you the hopeless
ugly honor of watching me
cry in bed because
being naked scares me
almost as much as  
never getting
rid of this.  
i am so toxic and so afraid
of smothering you.

when it feels like the subway tunnels
are caving in around you and
i’m not there to clear the rubble
remember how the light
reflects off my skin no matter
where the sun is.
the thing about the patterns
in the sky is that they’re not there
to please the floating lovers
who know they’ve got the atmosphere
trapped inside the space between
their palms. the sky is there
when all you see are concrete walls.
the atmosphere is blowing through
your hair and rushing through
your veins whether the lovers are
puzzle piece close or hemisphere far.
with all the soulstuff winding through us
i swear you can pretend
i’m the sky — boundless past the
tunnels, past everything that’s
smothering you.
together we can merge entire oceans.

what do you know about
substance?
when hungry sidewalk angels
amble towards you
hidden in jackets that
goodwill threw out on
the curb,
you look the other way.

is that the people who
don’t know where
their lives are going
are the only ones worth
being around and that
i should take my poetry
the same way i take my
coffee: strong and cheap
and wherever i can,
however it comes.
what i learned this semester
is that if you don’t get lost
it doesn’t count as an
adventure and if she
doesn’t gasp over the
skyline she isn’t worth
your bus money.
what i learned this semester
is how to find the best stories
where no one else looks;
in the people who sleep
under street lamps and
push their lives around
in shopping carts
and that once their words
hit, everything around you
turns to either promise
or poison.
what i learned this semester,
more than any formula or
literary device,
is that there’s a life here
waiting for me. i will remember
what reality feels like.

this sound is dangerously new
and his key is something
you’re not tuned to.
you are paper thin,
willow girl. nothing’s there
inside you to drive the hurt
away.
it will take a year
but you will leave him in your
best friend’s room
after telling the new boy about
your dreams and kissing him
as the grass turns golden.

2.
you’ve got hold of the rhythm
but you’re still stumbling
over fingerings, especially his.
he doesn’t know how to love
something like you and
you know it, but you’re
drowning in the way he
teaches your mother how to
count measures over dinner.
he will leave you in the field
that he carried you through
when your foot was hurt,
and you will cry and call
your best friend but fighting
means she doesn’t pick up.
you will sit alone there,
but don’t worry —
he is the only one
who will ever leave first.

3.
you should’ve known there was
something wrong about kissing the
boy whose apartment used to
give you nightmares. you will get away
before he can hurt you while
you aren’t sleeping.

4.
he doesn’t deserve to be the one
whose hand you’ll be holding
when you realize that you
can only ever lose yourself
in girls.

5.
she will coax out all the
notes in you that you never
knew you could hit,
but when your pitch starts
to fall she won’t be there
to even you out.
her touch will take ages
to rub off your skin and when
she comes back to you
with all her pegs out of place
you will only smile
and plug your ears.

6.
she will be the one
who teaches you that it is
usually best to stay far away
from the only person you can’t
begin to wrap your head around.
hearts have always worked
the same way.

7.
her touch will make the stars
less endless and the mountains
more suffocating. her curls will
tease your chest and snake around
your neck and you won’t know why
you don’t want them to.

8.
you will never find enough cadenzas
for a calamity like this.
she’s the girl who will kiss you
between boulders and show you
what a mountaintop sunset
really means and you will
love her like you’re not supposed
to love anyone yet; she will
turn you selfless and see-through
and broken and you will take
too long to see how she is
shattering you.

9.
you’re out of breath by now
but it’s okay —
the only notes you’ll ever
need to play with her arms
around you are the ones
that ring, “i’m safe.
i’m safe. i’m safe.”

this is how you’re gonna
go far, 1.5.
this is how you’re gonna
prove them wrong.

first, drop the number.
though they tell you otherwise,
it is as much a part of you
as the gum you stick under
your desk.
this world wasn’t made
for decimals or the 4.0’s
who couldn’t scrape the
digits off their skin if you
handed them a chainsaw.
you’re not going
where they’re going.

forget everything about
balancing chemical equations
and own the way you drink
your coffee black —
one day it’ll impress the
gold-skinned barista girl
and craft a story that
the periodic table could
only dream of.
purge the formulas from
your system and replace
them with bus routes
and train schedules and how
to become properly lost.
there is no theorem for the
fire escapes you’ll sneak onto
or the celestial alleyways
you’ll stumble across.
know your strengths, because
they’re practically shining
out of your pores.
literary analysis is worthless
compared to the way you
talk to strangers, and the
genius you’ll find shooting up
underneath the overpass
won’t care about how much
russian literature you’ve read.
what he’ll care about
is how you paint him every
sunset he’s ever missed
with the words you send
echoing off the concrete.

let every answer you’ve ever
bubbled in vaporize with your
mid-december sidewalk breath
and don’t wait to see whose
haggard face they blow into
next. you’re not going
where they’re going.

you are not a number.
you are who this world
was made for.