trying to figure out how to
keep the memories
and traditions
alive in a room where
i find no religion
only the smiling faces of those
who once made me

two girls kissing,
their mouths pressed up together, in

open-mouthed laughter
the spaces filled with all the

things their parents wanted them to be
but could not, the

people they could have been
if there weren't gaping holes

somewhere between where their
intertwined hearts should have been

we will grow families
that don't need to heal
from our love

when i am gone
i will miss the body,
its aching and its cramps
shoulder blade clicking
warm fat resting on my hipbones,
smoothing out over my thighs.
i will miss this,
the struggle of a breath,
the sound of walking,
organs desperately fighting for life.

when i am gone
i will miss the
smell of the morning,
of the rain,
the feel of page against palm,
fingers dancing delicately over ink.
i will miss hugging,
pressing bodies close
to remind bones of what it is to
be together, to be born again.

when i am gone
i will miss the
feel of cool glass and metal
against my skin
my eyes will yearn for the sight it used to take
so easily
to see the storm clouds roll in from the horizon
and the lights flicker on in the
dusk-dim apartment complex.

when i am gone
i will miss singing,
offkey notes on
green stricken afternoons
and shimmery dusty dawn-lit moon nights:
voices are born to make art, make music,
make noise,
i will miss holding my mothers hand,
rough and cool,
speckled brown with years of loving me,
will miss when my dna
did not forget
what it is to be loyal
to itself

time is a battalion
crushing fossils and relics
as the troops march
ever onward

we are all soldiers in an
unknown war

a stray mortarboard lies
crumpled in a heap under
trampling feet
and the scent of
unchecked ambition

why did they teach you
to cut yourself
on their greed and their sorrow,

even the boys in the books
have pain
you want to swallow