You choose a sepia filter
To match your timeless visage
To match the clothes you've wandered into today
But it is not a selfie.

Your eyes pierce them through their iPhone screens
Your smile is casually not directed towards anyone in particular
Your outfit is recklessly on point
And it is not a selfie.

It is a punch in the gut
to everyone who has ever
said you are not good enough.
It is not a selfie.

The wings by your eyes will go out of style.
The dye in your hair will wash down the drain.
The clothes will wear out and you will take pictures again.

But you have fabricated a moment.
You are smiling towards yourself.
Slap your image onto every social media you know
Next to the supermodels and Kardashians and words of self hatred
This is the fulcrum with which you will lever the world.
This is not a selfie.

i want your garden
sprout from the earth
breathe you in
consume all of you

i want to feel
green in my feet
in between my toes
it can't be beat

the sweetest smell
it's like the fuel
i know it all
a little too well

the warm embrace
what is this place?
it seems you've left
without a trace

who are you now
you've left me again
i feel the fear inside
purer than the water
that brought us here
it's beginning to get to me

I was taught to stop avalanches and raised to swallow tidal waves
But my hands are black as pitch with frostbite and my lungs are filled with water
But I shake off the cold and throw up the water
There is the avalanche in the shape of a coffin and there is a tsunami of raging expectations
And for ***** sake I’m gonna try

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.