What they don’t tell you in school,
while you’re trying to remember
the difference between prophase and metaphase
chromosomes and chromatin
is that really
biology isn’t science
biology is life


See, divorce
divorce is like mitosis
slow to start, but quick to finish

Begins at prophase
when conflicts arise as your family’s nucleolus,
your family’s unity
disappears

Your carefree life, your chromatin,
coil and change
become tight, tense chromosomes

Outside forces, mitotic spindles,
residing in the cytoplasm
start creeping towards your parents
to separate their souls

Metaphase:
you’re all lined up
single file
ready for battle

Centrosomes, middles of each new life,
poised opposing each other
with their spindles latched onto you kinetochore, your middle,
like a dog with it’s leash

Anaphase:
everything separates,
your world’s torn apart
and you’re left silently
watching
alone
as your sister is torn from your life

Telophase:
the pain starts to lessen
as you uncoil
and your broken family’s nuclear membrane
begins to reform

Once the paper’s are signed
once the cell’s wall’s rebuilt
your old life is over
and the process
it’s finished

See, they don’t tell you
don’t think you need to know
that
divorce is simply biology
and
mitosis
well, it’s life

We thought of us today as single cells
'Ciliating' across the universe of colour
under the coverslip of time; a microcosm
of pedalling plants or fettuccine of cells.

The hues of darkness are pink and bright,
in beach slippers tracing paths on glass,
and those springing Vorticella are flowers
we created in our fictions of science ...

But all possess a veneer bound
cytoplasm of affection, crawling like
Annelids across the void in a world
bursting in avatars of the invisible

or their transparent real selves
glowing like gemstones in the sky,
or simply opaque as we are, each
to the other under the play of light,

polarized views secreted within some
dark muddied pond, harbouring
the cells of love, shedding cuticles
of sorrow, laying the germ of tomorrow

or funneling delight in little green globes
that make food ... are food. We must be
blessed to be cytoplasm like them or cursed,
I don't know which, but it's all profound.

as RNA polymerase
quietly unzips your
DNA and moves along
the length of your genes
and a bit of RNA
emerges and moves
through the cytoplasm,
after the snRNPs do
their work, of course
and your ribosomes
attach and tRNA does
its noble job fixing
to its anti-codons
linking the peptide chains
of the building blocks
of life

as all this happens
I close my eyes
and kiss you
gently on the cheek
and you smile a little

we live in foggy car windows, spitting out white lies that turn in vain,
white lies that turn black
like your hair, as it caresses your shoulders
like my hands, as every cell in my being reaches for you
but the cytoplasm current is too strong, and swallows me whole
like if your words were quicksand
i would sink
i wouldn’t fight the pull
i would let each needle and thread stitch me to the right side of your brain
with no anesthesia
nothing can hurt more than tiny paper cuts that we don’t know about,
you are the hand sanitizer and lemon juice that drips into my open wounds
i try, and try to shake you away
i don’t recognize my own bed when i sleep alone
my dreams are more of a reality than the actual person laying next to me

i feel the cliff under our feet, i push you first,
but your sweaty palms grab my wild fang t-shirt
and i’ve never felt more alive than when falling to my death
leave the world behind
i don’t know if that is a blessing or a curse
leave me behind?
i don’t know if you are a blessing or a curse
let my lungs fill with each particle of quicksand until it overflows into my throat, spills out of my mouth
onto your lap

babe, i’m not trying to fix you even though i always try to fix people
you like me with makeup and rose petals
i still take rolls of tinfoil, clump them together, and swallow them whole
to fill my aching hunger, the number on the scale means nothing when you are dyslexic
please don’t see me with hives and weeds
that grow from my ankles, straps on me
with a ***** on the end
begging you to call out my name
with mouths open, and gentle kisses in the elevator after i met your mom
pull the bandaid off, rip my onion layers off

i still feel more at home
on crowded buses where i am the only, white person
white person walking in low lit alleys with gazing, men
men beckoning me to come closer till their hands slip, in
in hidden closets dating the opposite, ***
*** in unfamiliar places with temporary, homes
homes in hospital beds and drugs pumped into my, veins
veins in your arms, is where i am still trying to feel at home
trying to feel
trying...

honey, i’m sorry if i held your hand too long
if this can’t be as good for you as it is for me
cut me from my shambles
you didn’t have to say you loved me
i read it between your poetry
yet, i still hold my own hand, draped across my torso
sometimes gravity pulls my hand up my ribs, to my breast
so i can feel my heartbeat
maybe this time i won’t forget how to...breath
i will stop digging up my own grave
just to inspect my broken corpse, to try and rebuild this temple
the bricks don’t fit anymore
too many fragments taken away

like my body was used for science
the doctors diagnosed me with a hypothesis
it read if with you, then without me
what is a hypothesis without the theory?
theorize goodbye kisses at red lights
research the car filled with the smell of *** and morning
question **** stains on my sheets
or tear stains on my shirt you wear

i cried for the first time with you there
you were laying next to me in bed, my arms around you
you were asleep
and i wiped my tears on your shoulder without you knowing
i cried to the rhythm of your breathing
spoke hymns in your ear you would never hear
confessed my love, gave you my all
your eyes never opened
weaved your hair in my hands
while i unthreaded stories of my past traumas,
giving you one piece at a time
your heart never flickered
tinkerbell lost her flicker when she didn’t get attention
but how much was too much until it suffocated her?
my thighs in knots from straddling you

We were states of matter
until we had chemistry
a pure of mix elements causing eradication
and more like atomic radiation
we were powerful
an affective pair

then biology taught me
to value every heart beat of yours
every tissue to cells
every cytoplasm to mitochondria

and that Czechoslovakia
that you were from
had a capital named Prague
during world history
but nothing interesting than your story
during our midnight phone call

then mathematics taught me to calculate the distance between us
and physics showed me our chance of collision in every single velocity

I have used all kinds of formulas I learnt to solve our problem

but dear

I got the answer of
good bye

Good bye,
High School.

The chill that crawls in the cytoplasm
and
folds in against itself damasked and dynamic
but it wasn't the climate's bite
the pea gravel stone cemented into place
boarding up the fluid monument
poured up and leveled by its creator
but it wasn't the stone
digging into my heel
pressing on the once broken bone
that reminded me that this
THIS
is not the way i ordered my hamburger
and no
it wasn't any thing growing atop
my flimsy wrapping
pale and hairy
and then nothing
inside me and resting
along the walls of my longest tract
digesting my food along side me
even still
more base
it wasn't any amount of matter condensed
shooting
firing between two neurons
reminding me of half truths
or lies
blatant ones
which can careen me back
into places better left forgotten
no
what i felt there
with wet feet and cold quivering hands
was something that
despite what i would love to believe
CANNOT be measured
that which drew me from
every one of the places
that should be connected
but aren't
to a love
manifested as suspicion
that placed both egg and seed
in the same envelope
of
both disgust and admiration
******* Vicky
whoever you are
****
you
and all the cold
******* lice
and the pressure
the memories
they all try to drag me away
to a place where I cant see
what they desperately try to convey
one to another
and
our brilliant star moves from behind
one iridescent pink gossamer puff
sparkling for a moment
back behind another
it's warming
but it doesn't reach back
for your had
no request for your warmth
and yet
every fiber aches
for the moment when you careen
back into it
or when everything you know
is compressed back into it
that
that little moment
where everything and nothing make sense
like two dogs speaking french to each other
as long as they both know how to
howl
not just how to
how is simple.
but when
and why

Supermarket celebration
shoppers are cytoplasm searching
for cellulose, muscle, photosynthesis.

Oils, petrochemical and vegetable
love: faith and trust
for instance, the Food and Drug Administration.

In America, the custom is
to avoid meeting the other shoppers' eyes. We graze
like cows or wander as zombies to the oldies played over the aisles.

I've always liked it here.
Cornucopia, yes. Also
a place to be alone and depressed, or cool off.

Water and bone
and the known ingredients. Neurons
for remembering, calculating, touching stuff.

I have a favorite bagger
who has the smile of a lover,
wouldn't rather be elsewhere.

Like glamour stars in bikinis
(but unlike tomatoes and bananas)
cashiers and clerks are admired from afar.

Joe says What's not to like? Ice cream, yogurt,
profit, tofu.
To eat your fill is a blasphemy against God.

The days carry the essence of grand fatigue;
I once knew a good judge of character,
whom the recipients of righteousness
called a friend.  

He collapsed within the fog,
leaving a rare delicacy for me to consume.  
I savored the taste of blatant bitterness,
refusing to regurgitate the morsels
I quickly digested.  

Now I've got this nagging cough
and wheezing in my chest.
The plight of mad science
to taint my good blood cells
with the disease of contaminated cytoplasm.

I am becoming numb
to its brutal effects
and I am frightened.

They teach me math but I can't divide they teach me science but I couldn't tell you how the cytoplasm keeps the Nucleus safe from whatever blah blah blah
They taught me how to spell yet the spell check is still most commonly used app on my laptop I'm starting to see a bit of a trend now let's all not pretend that the stuff we are learning will ever stick but here's the real trick
Things they don't teach you in school
How to build relationships
They don't teach you how to cope with having a basketball game and a research paper to write And 20 math problems and a social studies article and having 3 girls texting me all in one night.
how to just stare at someone until you see that slight movement of their head and then you quickly bolt your eyes away and then wonder in fear... Did they see me? Don't act like you all don't know what I'm saying
They don't teach you how to deal with your heart stopping while the rest of the world's keeps on beating
Those... Those things are what truly is taught in school how to walk down the hall like you have never met the person who you actually used to spend day after day with yet you still walk by not knowing what they’re thinking although you know inside they are saying things like **** I was stupid to ever give him a chance or wow what a loser I hate him but you pray you pray that they are thinking wow I kinda miss him because you know you miss her too but no matter what happens it will never be you I love it always be f's because you know you failed but it's unfair because you were never truly taught.... I guess that's it right there
Things I learned in school I love you I guess it takes a bad grade to truly learn something and they don't teach you that yet that that is all I have learned.