They say it takes a village
to raise a child
I’m skeptical.
After all,
humans are innately selfish.
And I can get all the love I need from my biological parents.
But Alex’s mother takes me home from school,
And Coach Rod gives me ten extra push-ups for talking during practice-
tough love, he says
Mrs. Nobil takes me Black Friday Shopping
(the one retail experience my mom refuses)
Senor Rolando, who lives next door
shows me his vinyl records
and teaches me Spanish in small snippets of conversation.
They say it takes a village
to raise a child,
and I agree.

i turn eighteen today
and there are no words to describe it
it's weird to know
that i will never
be younger than i am right now.
you're at a crossroad of conflict
eighteen years young
eighteen years old
half of you wishes for adulthood
for the smell of freedom
the chance to begin a world you call your own
to explore your potential
the other half wishes to bury it's face in your mother's skirt
scared to leave
unsure of what the next move is
because no one is there to tell you
eighteen years young
eighteen years old

"WHAT do you want to be when you grow up?"
"what DO you want to be when you grow up?"
"what do YOU want to be when you grow up?"
"what do you WANT to be when you grow up?"
"what do you want to BE when you grow up?"
"what do you want to be WHEN you grow up?"
"what do you want to be when you GROW UP!?!"

whenever my mother finds a new hobby,
she becomes Obsessed with it.
Infatuated.
it’s an Overwhelming, Consuming,
Obsession.
but after a while,
After she has mastered her craft,
or achieved excellence in whatever she started,
the passion was gone as quickly as it came.
when I was Five,
I would watch my mother dance,
from the sofa.
tango, salsa, fox trot, waltz.
she would spin around our living room floor,
swept up in her own world,
Oblivious.
when she decided her feet were too tired,
she worked with her hands.
exotic foods no seven year old would eat
she made in bulk. indian food for the next week.
I was very skinny when I was Seven.
when I was Eight,
cooking was soon replaced with wildlife.
our house was filled with animal magazines,
tigers, birds, frogs, fish,
found their way into my mother’s heart.
my mother spent her weekends in the everglades.
then somehow,
documentaries on salmon soon became horror films,
and for a year, I couldn’t sleep at night.
the films turned into books,
and for days, she buried her nose in their spines,
held their backs gently like she was holding a child.
in the Seventh grade,
my mother couldn’t stop running.
running at speeds no Thirteen year old could keep in pace with,
I began to wonder if she enjoyed running, or running away.
panting and out of breath,
I realized I couldn’t catch up.
running wasn’t fast enough for her,
so bikes became involved.
her cycling was about as fast as her cycles of interest.
with her new body, my mother soon rediscovered clothes
in Eighth grade, I watched my mother have her midlife crisis,
piles of clothes, new with tags, spilled out of shopping bags.
her closet busting with clothes I could have,
should have,
worn.
the year after that,
my mother must have rode that macy’s escalator to heaven,
because she found Jesus.
she never really practiced what she preached.
then, christianity turned into world history in general,
which turned into soap operas,
which turned into the computer,
which turned into baking cakes.
now, the icing has been replaced with fertilizer
right now, my mother enjoys gardening.
she spends hours watering her flowers
literally watching the grass grow.
right now, I am Eighteen,
and I can’t help but to wonder,
was I the First?

In the most bizarre fashion,
I’m mourning for a log.
Once the king of the trees,
the tallest among them all,
it’s branches majestically reaching toward the sun,
Now landed on ground, in chunks and pieces.
I never knew him personally-
we would only exchange polite smiles
while we passed each other in the park
- but he was always generous,
always sharing his prosperity with passers-by.
In the most ridiculous fashion,
an elegy for a log.

since i was young,
people would always ask:
"what do you want to be when you grow up?',
a natural ice breaker,
a question all grown ups asked children.
it seemed every time i was asked that question,
i came up with a new response.
soon enough,
grown ups turned into peers,
and the more times I was asked the question,
it appeared the more significant it became.
and it evolved into:
"what do you want to be?"
then:
"where are you going to go?"
and
"what are you going to study?"
sometimes, i sit and think,
maybe there was a countdown,
of the number of times people would ask me that question,
and as the number got closer to zero,
the questions seemed to hold more pressure.
and eventually, that number would hit zero,
and I would have to come up with an absolute, definitive answer.
that same question,
repeated over and over,
is like a ticking time bomb.

How could I ever
Fully describe anything
In a short haiku?

Accordance, but we were only in there for a little while
Because you were always sleeping, and I was the sun.
So we only ever met at sunset, a halfway point. I wished we would meet at sunrise.
I loved your hands, but where did they go?
I admired you and your weird ways, the clouded haze, but in the end it just didn't make sense.
I never had an appetite around you, but they were frozen meals, cold and quick and meaningless.
You were always high, but I thought I was higher and maybe that made things worse.
And they say destiny isn't in the stars, but in ourselves. And if that's true, then the time you took me inside and showed me the stars must have foreshadowed something because I didn't feel shooting stars or fireworks, I only saw them. Mistook you for a lover but you were a schoolboy.
And there was always a party in the way, or a third party. Or not enough party.
And even when I knew it was over, I still listened to your notes for some message.

Before it even began, we were playing cat and mouse and we were never on the same page, probably not even reading the same book. Until eventually I think we stopped chasing for a little, and realized we were both mice.
We were never honest with each other, or earnest, though I was more Ernest than you.
I wished you would have miss me like you mrs. her

**** the Greek organizations
for turning my best friends
into girls that willingly throw their bodies
at boys who do not care about them.

**** the Greek system
for making them into people
who value their significance
in terms of letters that dead people came up with a long time ago.

**** the 'brothers'
for breaking them down
and making them say yes
when their answer really was 'no'.

**** their "sisters"
for encouraging them to go to formals they don't want to go to
and forcing them to participate in things
they didn't want to do themselves when they were pledging

watch me scroll backwards in time through our photos together
and feel me choke up a little
watch us fall in and out of love
backwards and forwards, thumb through the photos.