Pale skin, so delicate
so vulnerable.
Rivers of blue and green rushing with little red armies.
Shall I get to see my soldiers?
Am I really that brave?
All it takes is
one swift movement
to display the armies in their ravishing reds
rushing out and invading my outer-being.

The soldiers will forever more leave their mark.
An external reminder of internal turmoil.
Alas, I am far too weak.
I continue to fight off these soldiers whilst attempting to replace my false brave armour.

I am an exoskeleton
Falling to pieces
Half alive yet entirely dead
Crumbling and translucent
Delicate, and drifts, fluttering
With a single breath from someone
Nearby
I could be crushed or mangled
By a strike of the hand or a flick of a finger
But because I am considered beautiful and strange
I am kept preserved
The world revolves around beauty and
Oddities and I become one of these
Studied anomalies, a curiosity, merely
Because I am not like them
I am Oriental
And Occidental
I am a Southerner
And a Northerner
I am malnourished
Yet well fed
I am thin and short
But my stature belies my power
I am a geek, nerd, braniac, dork, and overachiever
But remain a stupid, ignorant, procrastinator
I am certainly an curio; a
Living
Breathing
Walking
Oxymoron

Through the gaps in the airline-style seating
I catch glimpses
snapshots
of her face
(or at least,
Its constituent parts)

An almond eye, subtly lined
a rise of cheekbone, flushed but unblushed,
and half of her smile
directed at me?

And I feel like Picasso
piecing together
the jigsaw piece sections
from an altered perspective
and seeing her whole
as beautiful.

i wonder




if someone else called you

to tell them a story

because the nightmares wouldn't cut their ropes,

would you kick your heels

upon your desk and spin

a tale as long as the night itself

until they fell asleep?



"a beautiful red-haired princess

lived in a land

far far away

but she was so amazing

that the prince would scale

the highest of the mountainsides

to see her"



you were always writing me

into fairytales

and sometimes they helped

fight the darkness



did I ever tell you about those nightmares?

how I heard an old Chicano folktale

about La Llorona

and how she came to me in a dream

weeping and screeching

and clawing at her eyes

and shrieking "Ayudame!"

through the tangle of the black woods in front of me

twisting riddles through my slumber.



do you know that

sometimes during barre stretch,

when we shoot our legs skyward,

or when i'm filing college interviews

your smile-laugh ripples

through my ears

and I grit my teeth

through peppermint pain

and try to drown it out?



did I ever tell you

when I got the phrases

"La Llorona"y "la rana"

scrambled up in my brain?

La maestra told us we would be

leyendo un cuento

sobre la rana

en the pond

and I thought she meant a story of

La Llorona

the wailing woman

maestro of a symphony of screams

and my heart stopped working

and I told her, "No puedo, I can't."

and she said, "Silly girl, la rana es 'the frog'."

and laughed.



do you remember when

they took me to a grave

and you told me about cancer

and how you thought that you'd die young?

you said it

so calmly

as if the dead around you

were offering up their Easter lilies

as a bridal bouquet

to be tossed to a lucky relative

and i just looked at you

with sea-glass eyes

and you kissed me

as the tears spilled over

into silent rivers

down my cheeks



i wonder

if sometimes

when you listen closely

you can hear the bottle-sculptures'

mouths lisping with the wind

or la rana

croaking in the pond

and smile-laughing right along with you

at me.



if the story has a different beginning now

or a middle

or an end



or if you've written me out entirely

or maybe just changed my fate



"a beautiful red-haired princess

was punished for her vanity

and doomed to wander and wail

for all of eternity

for she had done wrong."



and am I La Llarona,

the weeping woman?

because that's all I ever

seemed to do

The dreams are gone now

or, rather, the nightmares

but there are some things

more haunting in reality.



i wonder if she hears

the coded tick-tock

of the static

or the shrill cries

of tortured souls

forever searching

forever lost



i wonder

if you love her

more than me.

Sunlight, that insipid *****,
spills herself all over my desk in an open invitation.
I want nothing more than to run outside, rip off my clothes
and let her ravish me.
My open book,
ever the nagging wife,
looks at me in reproach.
"This was meant to be our day"
"you promised we's spend some time together".
That nagging shrew: I think I hate her.
I want to tell her that she bores me,
that the years have left her lusterless and lined,
full of nothing but dull words
and a dusty smell.

My body's a ruin, a temple condemned
to spend its lonely life waiting for you to attend.
To wander so slowly down the ***** of my neck
and linger a while in the arch of my breast,
where a fountain is standing that has always run dry
but it looks so inviting, you just have to try
so you raise your parched lips to the fount for a taste
before traveling on to the dip of my waist.
Past the brow of my hip, to the hinge of my thigh
where a river is flowing that pulls you into its tide,
and in its warm waters you find resolution
then go down to the temple to receive absolution.