In a large mixing bowl, add:
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose existential anxiety
- 1 ¾ teaspoons philosophical meanderings
- ½ teaspoon purple fatigue from the under-eye
and beat
and beat
and beat
for an hour or two or
until the mixture becomes a pale periwinkle.
​
In a separate bowl, cream together
- 1 cup sticky nostalgia
- 2 cups creamy moonlight, chilled
then crack 2 large wet pupils, at max capacity,
and mix, watching the salty yolks
dissolve sugary memories,
until time travel
begins to make you sick.
​
Then, stir in ½ cup sweat
from folded creases and crannies,
pour the batter carefully into a greased pan,
and bake underneath hot cotton bedsheets.

While waiting,
pluck 6 of the brightest stars out of the black sky,
pound into flat sheets, then
collect 6 pearls of hardened regret
and wrap each in a star.
​
When the cake turns a greenish-grey,
uncover and
top with star pastries
and pink marshmallows
from the early sunrise.

your memory isn't quite so loud anymore–
you've dwindled
into a two-dimensional
grayscale outline

you don't have much color left
            to bleed into my fingertips
            when I try to remember
that used to leave me
            blissfully intoxicated and
            helplessly madly addicted
no it's

faded and everything's
quite tame now

now I suppose I'm
just
missing you quietly

waiting
            as you still bubble
            on the back burner–
the steam has begun to dissipate and I've
            started to survey the mess I made while
            hopelessly blind

now I guess I'm
just
missing you quietly

feeling the heat of your palms
            evaporate and
waiting

waiting for my skin to remember
            how to fend for itself against the cold
                        – I wish you knew how much it still stings –
hearing the last remnants of your voice in soft broken echoes–
            consonants whispered into the breeze
wondering

as I watch you
fade

if I will
            ever
draw in color
again?

there were golden forests
and skies like seas

feathered magenta sunrise
floating on silver breeze

and under rosy ecstasy
the grass sang
"all is but a dream"


there were boundless scarlet sunsets
spidery grey trees

slender green shadows
yellow sidewalks agleam

and as spindly limbs swung quietly
the grass sang
"all is but a dream"


there were blood orange moons
seeping like molasses through
blackened open wounds

sandy-grey clouds swallow the skies
their toothy gaping mouths smothering cries

and as the sun turns to ash and steam
and dusky fields burn at the seams  

the rotting grass hisses  
"all was but a dream"

nothing is so
            small that it is
            inconsequential

and yet everyone is
            blind

sickeningly bright
            cities
                        with their glittering thousands
            flicker and burn
                        glimmer in the sun
                        and crumble to ashes in the yellow-grey
                                    belly of night
            and all resurrect at dawn to
                        die
                        again
    ­                                and again
                        without a moment of awe or any consideration

the sidewalks pulse
with
deep blue rhythms

a steady
           dull
                        drumbeat
                        lur­es immortal souls like a magnet
            with each
            metered throb
                                    pounds
                                    illusions into their malleable minds
                                    of meaningless mortality
                                    and empty entropy

their eyes glow with infinities but they
walk according to ephemeral rhythm
            marching through their cyclical days
with strings
            tied to their shoes
convinced they are free and
            that their grey and blue dreams
are the only colors
in the universe

i.
i was 7 when my sister pointed at my chest
covered by a loose pajama t-shirt
and said “you really ARE getting ***** aren’t you?” and laughed
and i
ran back to my room and cried
and thought about how
i could saw them off
without
the blood attracting too much
attention
so until i could figure out a way i
kept my shoulders hunched over
to hide myself

ii.
i was 8 when my mother bought me a bra
she scrunched it up in a plastic shopping bag
into a ball she concealed in one tight fist
she came up to my room
quietly
carefully closed the door behind her
whispering as she knelt in front of me
unwrapped my new shameful secret

iii.
i was 10 when my father first
grabbed my shoulders and told me to
stand up straight
gave me a lecture about bad posture
told me stories about old women nobody ever wanted because they look like turtles- can’t pick up their heads to look at you
i could only tune him out because
i couldn’t tell him that id much rather sink
into the hardened concavity of my aching spine
than be seen

iv.
i was 13 when i got my period during a test in school
feeling the weight of another secret on my
already-bent spine
only made me cry again
only affirmed the stereotypes we were trying to shatter
in the minds we were trying to change
i begged the nurse not to call my mom
but she choked the phone number out of me
and that night my mother couldn’t
speak to me without that pitying, distanced
look in her eye that i hated so much
but it burned the confidence i might have had to say something

v.
i was 15 when i told my father i didn’t want to go swimming
that i just didn’t feel like it
let him conclude that i was self-conscious, embarrassed,
too much to even say so like
every other woman he had ever known in his life
and he told me i had to be more adventurous
that he was worried i was never going to have fun in my life
never going to be outgoing enough to get by
while i held back tears and the voice about to say “I’m on my period”

vi.
i looked
in the mirror
and allowed myself
for a moment
to notice the body i was trying so hard
to evaporate
i felt
so defeated
that it was still there

there was pain swelling
growing like a cyst
pushing against the backs of my retinas
pressing through my papery skin and cradling
my eyes in
tired
bruises

my pathetic reflection told me
i hated living in secret
flattening my chest so no one can accuse me of being a woman
shutting the door so i can pour hydrogen peroxide on stained bedsheets because i can’t put them in the family’s washing machine
stealing my mother’s razor and shaving everywhere to look like the other spotless girls at school

i hate the whispering
the hunching
the hiding
and pretending

vii.
there is not much
a few pretty strokes of ink can do
but
i am here now
to write about
shouting
about truth-telling
and openness
about rebuilding and restoring
and change

change for shattered girls who hate themselves like i did
much more than i did
whose hunched spines break under the pressure of the unseen
who set torches to their Power and burn themselves to ashes

no more ******* secrets.