”yet the fervent flame that fuels her will flatten her to bodilessness” — bodiless by Christina Weiler

her blades like
shiny silver roots
            dug into
cold white soil

shaped thighs and calves
ankles forged from steel
firm and strong
            s    t    r    o    n    g
know their frictionless home
            better than the restrictive
                        ground for mortals
she learned to
            skate
                        before she could
crawl

the chill that
            penetrates
her
does not freeze–
it
            charges her body
                        fizzles in her blood
fills her lungs with
            red hot molten
                        fury

each powerful
            gut-wrenching
            scratch
          ­              scrape
            sharp            edge
carves
   ­         echoing prayers into
the heart of her
            unforgiving god

ordered
            by a world that doesn't
            understand where she came from
                        (whether heaven or hell no one really knows or cares)
to shatter
            the ice dreams that saved (or cursed) her
to obey
            the ground
to pretend that she will find that thrill—
            find herself— in
            something else

but through the aches she knows
she will never
forget

i want blue eyes
glistening like moon ripples on
mirrored lakes

i want blue eyes
burning like sapphire flames
in the furnace of half-baked
dreams

blue eyes
that churn glittering snow
and overflow
overshadow

blue eyes
like
liquified winter skies
dripping, seeping sorrow
wings of iridescent dragonflies
fountains in secret grottos

blue eyes
like yours
lost
            in their own ocean labyrinths
            in thought
            in other dimensions
where brown eyes
            cannot follow

sometimes i think
that maybe
if my eyes were blue
too
maybe you would

take me with you


            take me with you

darling, I can still chart the precise geometry of your nose,
count the number of freckles underneath your thin green eyes,
delineate the lifecycle of the stubble on your cheeks,
and all I want is to come back home to you...

aren't you going to miss
the way I could slip your belt out from under you
with my eyes still swimming in yours
while you lay down, hot and panting in the dark?

who will caress your naked chest as tenderly as I have,
slide her hand up your shirt the way that makes you shiver
and kiss you everywhere like gentle rainfall,
warm and soft and fervent like poetry?

who will bandage the fall wounds
on your torn up knees and elbows
and wash your 22-year-old body like a baby in the bathtub
when you're so drunk and tired you cannot stand?

who will stroke your hair as you sleep with one leg bent in her bed and
scratch the back of your neck and
hold you close to calm your racing heartbeat and
remember the pills you take at night and where you keep your contact lenses and all your family stories and buy you Tylenol and your favorite Gatorade when you're sick and never,
ever,
ever leave
you the way that
I did
?

that morning, I was woken up by the beating of your chest
against mine.
it was faster and that meant you were awake,
my love, my darling,
you were
awake and thinking and moving again,
no longer just your soft, comfortable, sleeping body,
and I cried in your arms because I knew that
it was time to leave home.

the sunwarmed stone singes the long-dormant nerves in my adult fingers and suddenly I
remember what pear trees used to smell like in June,
as backyard swing rope burns emerge on my inner thighs underneath my slacks
and sweat cooled by dusk on the back of my neck.

the heat accumulated over years of summers
is my loss of virginity too, and I realize now that pear trees
in August smell like ***,
like sweat and shame.

there is a handful of jolly ranchers and pack of cigarettes
on his bedside table,
to which, afterwards, he says, "take what you want"
and I wish that I could as freely as he took me,
but I am no longer angry at men for this because
I know I could just as easily have done the same.

we all have to decay somehow,
after the pleasure like candy we take from each other
and **** out of the earth to consume in glut,
and after suffocating each other with our selfishness --
what more appropriate fate than sugar and smoke?

so hesitantly I take one of each to his balcony and do my penance,
and hear him come up behind me to take my hips into his palms
and when I feel sick I think about my mother's pear tree,
despite its history and crimes still flowering every spring.

Our little collegetown is a jungle tonight,
with the deafening, staticky drone of locusts constituting
its own kind of warm gravity,

sidewalks drenched and carpeted with a rotting mess of
blood-red maple leaves, and

thousands of spiders the size of human eyes, glaring
down from the dead-center of their backlit, dew-drizzled webs.

I always thought that I'd never be loved enough.

In crafting anthologies on the angles of my favorite noses,
I pretended I didn't want someone else’s protractor on my own,
and prepared for a life sentence as the uncharted geometer,
the invisible painter, the secret poet,
the immortalizer, rather than the immortalized.

I find myself, now, to be a poem––
your poem––
etched into the curvature of your jungle-green eyes.

But walking home in our jungle tonight, I feel sick.
Your ears distort my hesitant laughter
into a dissonant, deafening euphoria, and

when I lay my head on your heated chest, I can feel the blood
gushing underneath your skin,
surging through your veins, storming, drowning
you, and I feel sick because all this love you pump for me--
all this love you are drowning in--
only rots in my guilty stomach...

When my memory is watching me
with her thousands of glaring eyes,
she will always mourn the breaking of a beautiful heart.

I like the days when
I wake up at noon
            and crawl slowly
            from messy sheets
            to greet with blurry eyes
            the lazy afternoon sun
and eat breakfast
over the sink
at two PM

I make my tea
            lemon ginger
            with honey to calm the steam
and carry it upstairs
I sit at my desk
            in my pajamas
            half my face covered
            by my frizzy bedhead hair
and
squinting out my window
into the pink and periwinkle sunset
I pick up my pen
            with soft cold fingers
and scrawl onto a napkin
from yesterday's dinner
my poetry
in ink
the color of
            anxious afternoon sun
            steam from lemon ginger tea
            brown of unkempt hair
            and the
pink
and periwinkle

sunset.

I know Father B came to our class more times than you can count, and
denounced all those mortal sins with a firm pointed finger and
one big bulging eye that glared at you in your stiff collared shirt and preppy plaid kilt while he spoke, as if
a white lie or one slice of pizza too many would
send a divine bolt of lightning straight through your chest or
a note home to your parents.

but I left the house once,
and there are some things no one else will tell you.

first of all,
when you tell a lie or eat too much pizza,
all you get is a nasty stomachache,
which feels a bit like a punishment, but you get another chance
and next time, you tell the truth and
eat just enough to fill your belly.

you don't lose any vision at all if you ******* and
people do it
a lot.

speaking of,
***
happens outside of marriage.

actually, I might be so bold as to say that MOST ***
happens
outside of marriage.

sometimes, people have ***
with people they don't love.

people marry people they don't love, too,
or grow into love or
fall out of it just as easily.

and sometimes people love people
they are not having *** with.

you can love someone so much that it physically hurts,
and you will put your tear-stained hand to your aching chest and understand exactly where the phrase "broken heart" comes from.

and sometimes you won't know
how you feel about other people or
about anything, really.

people aren't just bad or good like that –
there are some bad people,
and there are some good people, but
most people
are just lost and
lonely, and
looking for someone who will be the answer to the giant, crying
questions they have curved themselves into.
they read books and go to bars and get promotions and
wear framed glasses and make appointments and call their lawyers and buy apartments and make resumes and get married and divorced all like they know what they're doing, but
most of the time,
they are just taking shots in the dark, and
trying not to feel guilty about
the people they hurt
along the way...

you live under a rock now, and
one day suddenly it'll feel like you've exploded out and
into a hellhole, and honestly,
as far as I can tell,
there are no secrets to life carved into some mountain somewhere, or
arranged in the patterns of your veins, or
even written in a giant bible, but
the one redeeming quality of life is that we can
suffer together.

we're all tired and directionless, but
two warm calloused palms fit together so much better than you think,
and waffle fries taste like heaven at 1 in the morning with friends,
and staying up all night talking with someone and finding out they are just as tired and directionless as you are
makes you realize all of a sudden–– like
seeing the faraway glimmer of two little headlights
on a dark empty highway––
that it's okay.
and
you may be more lost than you can even tell, but
at least you know now
that you're not alone.

My loneliness makes me taste like toothpaste
because over the course of my shame-polluted day,
regrets pile up like grime in my gums, and she
likes to pretend,
(hundreds of miles deep into the night),
that brushing my teeth for an extra two minutes or so
renders me finally clean, and
forgotten.

She makes me use the peppermint that stings, because
it’s easier for me to picture the rotten remains of my
ugly, fumbled words losing their sticky grip
on the insides of my cheeks,
dissolving in fizzles and bubbles and fire as if in
flavored acid.

My loneliness tastes like hair and
skin pulled taut over bent knees
because she imagines that her set of
tired, unwanted bones fit together
like an awkward origami cocoon enclosing,
(shrinking)
my repulsive, obtrusive body.

And she folds around me
despite the sharp, stabbing aches
in my curved spine and knotted appendages
because we have learned that her skeleton
is the only thing that will protect
me.

in any life i would have still loved you
i am sure
and love itself would be jealous of the way that i love you
with desperate fervor and with fear
only of our own mortality
only of the ephemeral rivers and mountain ranges that could erupt in our way while we are alive
and of the time we may lose
but in every lifetime
when we are taken by whatever will take us away, wherever and whenever we reawaken  
in every lifetime i choose you

she is just like her father
my mother says to our family, her friends, the people she sits next to on the train
it is often an insult to
my stubborn head,
filled with logic gates constantly firing
and cursed with a sharp tongue—
my body,
with more fight boiling in her than all the enemies i’ll make in my life will ever take out of me,
and more soul-fire than she can keep contained within her,
burning, burning, and unafraid
to fill her lungs with the smoke of her passions,
to light aflame years at the end of her life and sculpt the embers and ashes into things she knows will live longer than her body.

i am just like my father
and he like his
and if you knew who they are you would prefer that i be borne of any other bloodline

i am my fathers daughter
i know the power of my integrity,
there is nothing scarier to you than a woman who cannot be bought,
who knows when she is right and will sacrifice everything,
set herself on fire and burn herself into a martyr for the good, the right, the true, things that are bigger than she is,
things some of you have never understood, will never understand, and you will dismiss me, think i am crazy.
even still i know my life has cosmic importance
even still i know that i am a threat to everything you are

i am my fathers daughter
i am my fathers daughter

there are four blues
in every Crayola crayon set:
            Cornflower
            Wild Blue Yonder
            Periwinkle
                        and
Midnigh­t Blue –
            the deepest
            and the darkest

but still
not deep enough
            never dark enough

Midnight Blue
cannot engulf
            Cornflower Cinderella in bone-chilling dread
                        as she performs her mythical meltdown
                        bent over the Wild Blue Yonder fountain
            no Periwinkle constellations are reflected
                                    in her existential tears
                        and the Night is not saturated enough
                        with black depth
                                    to seep like molasses into the cracks of her pupils

because I’ve been awake at midnight–
            through the screen of my own foggy tears
I’ve gazed deep into the bitter, bloodthirsty
                        eyes of the Night
            swallowing my window

real Midnight Blue
            glows eerily at the touch of a Cotton White moon
            coats trespassers in crisp cold loneliness
                        but the wanderlust in a penetrative warmth
            boils in the throats of the lost
                        the wistful
                        and the guilty
            ebbs and flows
                        through the fissures
                        of the broken
            and gouges out the sweet innocent hearts

of the lifelong

dreamers

if it wasn't for that pretty head ...

staring into my dark, lonely mirror, i feel my body
devour itself – my organs
twist and wring their tissue into thick dark vines—
capillaries converting into tangled leaf clusters on
two heaving baobabs,
the stomach flattening into a rotting jungle floor,
and without seeds or a plan or an objection,
an ecosystem erupts,
growing by night—

not the science textbook kind,
with turquoise estuaries and mangrove trees
and perfect clouds like pulled white taffy, no—

the water there is tar, pooling
at the tip of the cranium and
oozing through the brain
like a slimy pink grate, raining
over the dead and the deathless alike,
making misshapen monuments
out of pain.

the body is silent
as its inner kingdom declines,
and because it is a shell it
becomes preserved,
a petrified relic
of its old glory.

if it wasn't for that pretty head
with those bouncy brown curls,
that pale, almost blue-tinted skin and
your innocent doe eyes glaring into their own headlights like they didn't deliberately design the nightmare that lurks and grows behind them, like they never notice the sticky burning tears collecting in their corners, like they really might
miss their reflection
if it was gone ...

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?

last night I dreamt that I kissed you,
Mr. Too-Tough-to-Care,
fumbling over grease-stained t-shirts and hair
to find your tungsten-scorched neck,
slipping my slotted fingers onto your left ear
and charging my palm with your heat.

last night I dreamt that I kissed you,
Mr. Beer-is-My-Therapy,
I kissed your ***** nose, sharp and pointed,
prominent, belligerent––
a power symbol––
but it's always the first on your face to flush pink when
I talk back to you––

on saturday when I ****** up the car and nearly
gave you a heart attack, Mr. I-Ain’t-No-Little-*****, you
held my hand with the same
concealed desperation––

I know because you were looking at me
when you instinctively–– against the will of your mechanical masquerade––
forced your sweaty fingers
into the unsuspecting
pockets between mine.

Mr. Brake-Fluid-Doesn’t-Bother-Me
froze...
the honey seeping through the pores in my skin
must have been even more corrosive because,
Mr. Romance-is-for-*******,
you were paralyzed,
like you suddenly realized you’d become
the target of your own jokes––
your heart's powered by something much softer than gears––

news flash, Mr. Too-Tough-to-Care:
you're just as unsalvageable as I am.

“Enjoy the silence”
But we whose blood pulses
in tempo and
Whose souls dance
with melody -
We do not know silence.
We never sleep.
We cannot enjoy the silence
or ever stop
Imagining.

Lavender water ripples
Onto the dazzling golden shore
Pushing sequins into the
Ruby air to crown the sunset

Deep green silk ribbons twist
Into palm trees and
Bright orange stones line
The shell of an elegant turtle underwater

Scarlet and silver puffy clouds
Rain shiny white pearls
That click as they hit the sidewalk
And fill the street with snow

We fear silence.
Silence is deafening -
Dissonant tones that echo
“Alone”
Without music, we are
Nothing.
Vivid reds and blues drain
into empty grey.
Glitter turns to dust
Rhythm slows
And I fade
away.

yet i stand again alone and cold
watching
an onslaught of angry wet bullets
pummel my peanut-shaped torso

if every midnight a new ghost
was born to loop again through my day
all my naked peanut-shaped torsos
would be standing here
too
all my red veiny feet burning a hole
through the white ceramic floor
and thousands of the same absent brown eyes
watching
– only a few
seeing

all my fingertips work in sync
rubbing face cream into
millions of layers of sticky skin
as our gurgling stomachs tie themselves into knots
and we record in our dejected minds like abused children
shivering in the corner of our skulls

the sickening feeling of
being both
perpetrator and victim

my Poems are not about me
if I were sunshine
            my poetry shines brighter
if I were thunder
            my poetry rumbles louder
if I were rain
            my poetry weaves into thin films of gossamer
                        and glistens around my edges

my Poems are not about me
when I write
            I separate a sparkly heartstring
                        from the rest
            thread it carefully into my needle
and hurry to weave a story embroidered with colored confetti
            and shimmering sequins

before the glitter
            like snow
            drifts
and sticks
            to the remainder
of my dull
honest
heart.

I.
hair in luxurious brown ringlets
            stiff with hairspray
arm bent down my back
            elbow in my face
            fingers contort
                        jump and spin
grab the zipper and
zip up my dress in front of
                        the mirror
            bejeweled bodice weighs me down
                        bright blue drowns
                                    me out
let the reflection of my own
            two hazel brown eyes
                        hypnotize me
            fingers absentmindedly re-twist my curls
                        then
                              ­      snap
            out of it
plop onto the floor and strap
on my heels
            practice walking
            calves and ankles clench to
                        keep from falling over

II.
picture-perfect makeup
            dates in pressed tuxedoes
find your friends
elegant silver jewelry
            sequins sparkles and flowing colors
                        blur together
hold hands
            pose here
you have an eyelash
            fix that one button there
careful don't trip
            you look beautiful
                        quick one more
smile
            
III.
bass pounding
            pulsing in the walls
                        and behind my eyes
dizzying rainbow lights
crowd jumping
                                    blind and deaf
                        screaming
            curls fall out
                        makeup melts
            fists make dents in the humid air
                        ties loosen
            heels ripped off sore feet

IV.
stumble outside
            soft cool twilight
bass still rattling the floor
but someone's prom date
            is a poet too
pure thoughts about
            art and
                        constellations and
                        calculus
            silence the mob inside
hours fly
            sky darkens
stars
            reflect like glowing freckles
            onto smiling cheeks

V.
put your shoes back on
            "get his number!"
because you think I won't
            be satisfied until I
                        kiss him?
we spent a night
            under the stars
            together
our minds together
            crafted thoughts that
                        penetrated the cosmos
            and will float among the stars for
                                    eternity
we were in each other's lives
            for as long as we needed to be
                        created infinity together
                        and
            now –
                        we
carry out
our life sentences
alone

Beauty is everywhere … isn’t it?
Truth ribbons twisted into knotted nests
housing corrupt filth and crusted lies
            remain deliberately ignored
to spoil further
and pollute the air with
            smog the color of rupees and shifty eyes

why let sleeping dogs lie?

too many can crowd your Mind
steal the breath from your eroding lungs
press against the brittle glass of
            moral compasses
                        and shatter
            rights and wrongs
blur lines between
            honest ambition and power addiction
            use and abuse
            the lower classes and
                        “untouchable” garbage scavengers plastered
                                    with muck and grime
                                    too filthy for water to clean
                        deprived even
                                    of the life of a sleeping dog

absolute power corrupts absolutely
Power is not love
            whether you are crooked slumlord of Annawadi
            or All-Holy Divine Servant to God Himself
and neither is pride
Love does not burn tongues
            except when it is not
Holding me with his right hand
and scarring me with his left
is not even half-love

sleeping dogs don't deserve to lie
It is my universe to disturb
They will bite me but
the crushed Purple Hibiscus
            underneath full bellies
will unfurl their petals and rise up
again.

I agree that
you are the epitome
            of perfect
everything you do is
            impeccable, flawless
your life is free of paint splatters–
                        unless they are symmetrical–
            wild, unbridled adventures–
                        unless they are in your schedule–
            loops of messy cursive–
                        unless they are precisely designed
                        to embody a particular style–

and nothing you do
            is ever wrong
ever disorderly
ever imperfect

but
what are you
            now that you can produce
            perfection?
            can you say
                        with the pure honesty you are so proud of
                        that you are
                                    free?
                      ­  that you are not a slave to what you make?

did you ever stop cleaning
                        wiping
                        e­rasing
                        redoing
                        re­writing
to notice that
you have eradicated with
            blind disdain and vehement prejudice
            what might be considered
                        art?

that the joy of flawlessness is not real–
            just
                        the temporary absence of fear?

that true, natural, unplanned beauty has become
            not only your enemy but a lethal weapon?

that maybe
in your relentless process of perfecting
            you have generated imperfection?

When we have stood, cold and raw, cracked open, underneath
the waterfall of time for long enough that
it doesn't burn our skin quite so much
anymore,
I hope that you can repair the heart I
tried to break as gently as I could.

I hope that you find a girl who has always wanted to
name her baby Cody,
who can ski like a demon and
take her liquor like a cowboy and
lives for Silverados and Colorado sunsets.

I hope that when you remember my laugh,
it doesn't sound quite so pretty as hers, and that
when you scoop her up from behind,
it will feel like you are doing it for the first time.

But when she sees you cry and
says she's so grateful to have a boy who knows how,
I hope you are reminded of all the love I gave
to help you learn.
When she hugs you and thanks you for listening,
I hope you remember the time I spent listening to you,
teaching you what it means to be heard.

The way that I love you is not a fake, flimsy kind of love that
floated away when I left you--- no,
I want your girl to be all the comfort and safety and warmth and devotion that I could never be to you...

And if she isn't,
I hope that she reminds you of me
enough to make you leave before
she breaks you again.

there is nothing quite like being with you ...

sitting cross-legged on your warm crumpled comforter in dim amber light
with hunched backs against the white stone wall,
silently working to piece each other together,
merging thoughts and shoulders,
falling into each other's gravity and orbiting like stars–
we couldn't figure out
how to get any closer ...

we lived in shoeboxes then,
in ***** laundry and ramen-flavored freedom,
the soundtrack in our background
shuffled steps and muffled laughter through thin walls,
pencil scratches and elevator dings,
wooden doors and heavy coats,
cars in the snow rushing by our open windows,
hot cocoa, creaking bedsprings, and
singing–

I have been listening for the music in the things here–
I have searched in comforters, in stone walls,
in laundry and ramen,
in slippers and open mouths and pencils and elevators and doors and coats and cars and snow and windows and chocolate and bedsprings and everyday I try to remember something else I can dissect:
some texture, some melody, some pattern, some rhythm
where you might exist too,
but your music
is nowhere else.

we live in big empty houses now,
in hardwood floors and toothpaste-flavored loneliness.
I can still hear our shoeboxes
and feel the pull of our gravity
somewhere
fading ...

Poets don't see what people see
          I'll show you a treasure trove
                    of pearls twinkling with metallic luster
and all you'll be able to see
          is rain
I'll gasp and excitedly point
          to mysterious black calligraphy
                    carefully inked onto the purple and orange
                    bruised back of the horizon
and the harder you look
          the more you will only see
          a tree that has lost its leaves

Poets don't see what people see
          but that doesn't mean what we see
                    isn't there
With knives of love
          hate
                    joy
          anger
     ­               nostalgia and
          agony
we whittle away at ordinary things
          until our poetry emerges
dripping with color and glitter
                    a perfect replica
                    of the glowing soul within

and she came home from the sea
thinking about the balance of things

the way the palms of her feet
left mountains in the sand

and the way the sun hung
–unmoved by wind or waves–
suspended
in the sky
or sea

thinking about
the things she
heard
or spoke

gifted
or stole

forgave
or burned

and the fragile little life she acquired
somewhere
along the line

not even potent enough
for the sea to notice

nor long enough
to change its mind

the way she exists only
in the space between things

at the mercy of
everything

and reigning lord of
none

Embalmed in textured navy fabric space,
we float in vacuum silence, orbiting like stars.

With outstretched finger solar flares, we bridge
the space between us, puzzle over charts
and physics, piece together what we are–

in blazing convex eyes like mirrored spheres,
reflections question why they'd been afraid …

We curled up in our function’s minima,
derived the strongest force we'd ever seen
before. We hadn't considered, I'll admit,

because it seemed just so farfetched– absurd–
a conscious variable, god, or of the sort,

by whom our stellar glory was produced,
allowed, controlled. Because what universe–
inanimate and gloomy hunk of void–

destroys with prejudice, unless it minds
whose theories rest on hope and lovely lies?

her deep breath flutters
            each quiver
                        a frantic
            flicker
            and            snap
     ­                   of a shivering sail
in the relentless
wind

her hands tremble
            pulse desperately
            echo the panicked heartbeat
                        of the splintering hull

I reach to hold her hands
            to settle the raging storm
and as my fingers close around them
            I feel the bloodcurdling shrieks
                        of the crew and passengers
            the wood creaking
            the swaying with each massive wave
            the heavy rain pummeling the deck
I look up
            to see storm clouds
                        in her irises
            casting shadows
over her eyes

there is nothing I can do
I cannot see where the skies
            brighten
I'm not sure if they do
but I will hold your hands
            grip the mast
and stay on board
until the pulse

stops

cold

scoop your old coffee mug
into the sunrise
fill two-thirds
with steaming pink and yellow brew
and one-third
with crisp cool breeze

mix in a few crystals
of shimmering sunlight
from the drowsy trees

pinch a few strands
of silver cotton candy
from the bellies of the clouds
stir until dissolved

close your eyes
and sip slowly

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"

despite that the body of a poet is shaped like a question mark        

every poet has the answer to one question
            as if she were born with the words
                        already engraved into her forearms
                        crafted by an ineffable power
                                    – whether divinity or demon
                                    she does not know or particularly mind –

"why do you write?"

i guess
            my indecipherable forearms and
            the way that my fingers
                        then curl to match the curve of my spine
make me
            not a poet

just a fugitive
            running because it is the only thing i know how to do
            and because i wont survive the night if i dont
            
and yet
the further i go
and the more ive seen

the clearer it seems to me
            that everyone who writes
            is just running

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.

everything is breaking
not melting
            as the frozen pond
is relinquished by Winter
slowly the ice
            recedes
                        peacefully
no
I am
breaking
            not even like the shattering of a china doll
I wish it was
            that easy
I am breaking
            slowly
eyes melting into
            pitiful milky puddles
fragments forming and fissures widening

everything is lost
but you can't tell
only I can because
            I am the one who
                                                had to
            surgically remove
souls from bodies
            to protect them
you see a snapshot of their lifeless husks
            and you don't know
            you see me posing with them
                        boasting them
            painting myself
                                    a
                    ­                            w
                                   ­                         a
                                      ­                                  y
you don't realize
            that you can't take a picture
            of something so pure
so
I had to
break
everything

nothing is mine anymore
but still
nothing
            will ever
be
yours

they have the same bird in texas,
the ones that sound like chalk in the driveway in the
late evenings in september,
like reading nancy drew from the public library on wooden porch benches,
like orange light on the counter from the kitchen window,
belgian block curbs and watching airplanes roar over
the sunken sun

instead it is me driving home to no one from work in clothes that look nothing like my father's but still remind me of his car pulling into our driveway in yorktown at 6pm in september,
cutting bell peppers and tomatoes in the kitchen the way my mother used to over the sound of air conditioning and oil popping,
and the smell of dinner when I let the steam from the shower flood the high hats in my tiny kitchen is nothing like it used to be but smells exactly like hers

and the birds that followed me to texas are in the trees outside my window in the late evenings in september,
hailing a different sinking sun and the end of days
that feel much shorter than they used to

I fell for you all late summer steam and dark humid rain,
            electrically charged fingertips and cursive smiles.
I didn’t even open my eyes in the deep to
            see and mourn what I had lost ...

The moment you balanced your feet next to mine on the curb and
            bowed your head
            to hear the absentminded showtune
                        on my breath like whiskey,
            whispering to me in my tapered silence that you
wanted to hear me sing,
            with earnest like opened peach halves so raw and sweet
            that my voice obeyed
                        before I had the chance to decide ...

The breath you took when I whipped around
            in my bus seat to offer you a pink polka-dotted grin,
and the delighted children we became in our anticipation,
            all crossed stars and side glances savored like chocolate truffles
                        too thick and syrupy to devour whole ...

I fell for you all sweaty foreheads and damp pavement,
            full palms and knotted stomachs –
I always knew that my concavity had a counterpart.

But then the ache in my lungs when,
            with bellies full of Dippin Dots and funnelcake,
            retinas imprinted with neon orange lights,
            throats scratchy from belting and laughing,
            your hand burning my thigh in the dark and
            my head on your shoulder,
you rested your head
            on mine
            too,
            hard and heavy,
                        straining my neck, and

girls are told that they will be
            held and carried,
but love is not gilded or glittered,
            not a pedestal or throne,
            not a carnival or sweaty palms,
            not plastic smiles or chocolate truffles,
            not whiskey or shared melodies sung quietly in the rain.

I fell in love with you that night,
            nothing but hard, heavy heads on bony, tired shoulders.

thin, shaky pink finger
           points downward
solemnly accusing
            the vivid violet
            and brilliant tangerine ocean
                        boiling beneath
of the ****** ******
            of the sky

Sharp stinging tears bleed from my eyes
Betrayal burns a hole in my heart.
You lied to me.
But the truth is suddenly too painful to bear.
I watched you turn into a monster.
I watched that innocent, familiar face
Morph into an ugly beast
With empty sinister eyes that
I don’t recognize.

What have you done to me?
What have I done?
My purple childhood fantasies
Have been stripped from my soul
And it is freezing in the dark blue ocean
Of guilt.

I hate you but now
I hate myself more
For missing you.
Every day I think maybe
You have grown up
Maybe my deep scars have healed
Maybe I will recognize your soul
Behind the smokey curtain of your dark eyes.

But it doesn’t matter anymore.
I stay away from you.
You are my past now.
You and your twisted lies
And your empty eyes
And your psychotic smirk
Stay only
With the day you left me.

Time is the realest thing in a human life
But no human can define it;
Everyone can feel it
But no one can touch it.
What was it like
Before Time?
The universe was simply
There?
Simply
Existence?
Or is the universe linked to time -
If they are one and the same,
There would be
Nothing
Without Time.

Time passes.
That is the only thing I know
For certain.
No matter how hard I cry
Each tear that streams down
Wishing, begging Time to stop
Only for a while
As Time evaporates the futile defiance
On my face and puts a sting in
My tired eyes and
Makes the wet tracks cold.
Second after second.
Unrelenting.
I'm running out of
Time.

Time consists only of moments.
Every moment is real and alive
When you are living it,
But Time converts to memory
And those living breathing
Moments
Are now
Gone
Except from your imperfect memory.
Vanished.
A small voice
Echoing in a dark tunnel
Just a moment
You cannot be sure even existed.
I can only be sure of now.
One day I might not
Remember today or
This
Moment.
The paradoxical instant where past
Meets future.
We live in that
Indefinitely small moment
Where who you were
Meets who you are making yourself to be
With the irreplaceable aid of
Time.

the next day the rumors had already stained the walls
            red as the shame on your freckled cheeks

everyone knew what you had done

the words passed around like morning coffee
            poured half-n-half with frothy nervous laughter
            snickers and side glances

"cassie kissed a girl with blue hair in the parking lot of glory days"

they must have been watching you
seen you in the moment you wanted to protect from them the most
             to bury deep inside your guilty heart

but you were their entertainment at glory days instead
            the perfect accompaniment
            for their 1am pancakes and gossip
emma glanced out the window
            and in the dim amber light of the parking lot she spotted you
                        and your girl with blue hair next to your car
            watched her take your shaking hand
                        caress your cheekbone
and they all laughed at their perfectly-timed sideshow
            laughed at the love you couldnt help but feel
shrieked shamelessly
            syrupy mouths full of pancake
            when you lifted her bowed head and kissed her gently
they were taking notes of every movement for school tomorrow

as i watched them break you apart
i hoped so badly that you didnt notice them there
            that you didnt see them pointing from the window
            that you didnt know they were selling pieces of you
            that you didnt hear them laughing
            that they would all forget

and if you knew i hope they couldnt take your pride away
            that you would always remember it as just
            you and your girl with blue hair
            in the parking lot of glory days

I am the quiet poet
I draw my silk from
            the writhing aurora borealis
                        in the frozen sky
            and twist its ethereal light into dripping ink
            still wet on the page
You think you know me?
            you don't know me.

I am the serene night sky
                        and the boiling hot stars
I am the tempestuous seas
                        and the playful shallow shores
I am the relentless scorching desert
            and the soft smooth tides of sand

I was a prodigy, a freak
            I came into this world
with a pen in my pudgy little fingers
and a notebook clutched to my chest
I watch
as diamond rings fall like rain
onto the fourth fingers of my peers
            imprisoning them
but my female ancestors slew dragons
            I am free
            I will always be free
                        no man can handle me anyway

I am a captivated student
            of the authors and poets before me
books are my haven, my lovers, my dreams, my life
I am not human
Arms open, eyes shut, head to the sky
            I am but a channel
for the flow of the universe.

some vow to serve their god
                        rosary beads imprinted in red
                                    on trembling fingers
            to love their partner
            to be silent
            to live in poverty
                        hoping that the filth and dirt they sleep on
                        will nurture mythical seeds of enlightenment

I
do not grovel on my knees at night
            wishing that one glittering silver prayer ribbon
                                    from ten thousand
                                    all crumpling against the walls of my mind
                        would please reach something somewhere
                        or someone

I
pray standing
I pray alone
            firmly in front of the mirror
feet planted
            on top of dirt
                        filthy but barren
I pray to Truth
            yes it is cold when it is
                        raw
            its sharp teeth hurt when it
                        bites
but may Truth freeze and shatter
            my defeated heart
            when I forget

I
make a vow to myself
            that I will never
                        wrap up my cracks and fissures
                        with bandages made of someone else's skin
            I will never
                        set a torch to my Power and burn it
                        to ashes small enough
                                    for you to eat it
            I will never pay you
                        for the Soul you
                        do not own
            you cannot
                        wring me out
                        and mold me
                                    into one of you
                        I am stone

yes
I
am cold when I am raw
my real thoughts
            fears
            feelings
            dream­s
are sharp
and you
            will feel them bite

some vow to serve their god
            to love their partner
            to be silent
            to live in poverty

I
pray standing
I pray alone
            that when my knees are weak
            Truth will grant me the strength to fall
            into the godforsaken depths of hell
                        before I kneel

my baby girl:
both your mother and you are 22-year-old women
at some cinematic cosmic intersection in nonlinear time

brushing our teeth in public bathrooms,
falling asleep next to fat men in the 37th window seat on planes,
slowly calling home less and less often as we finally
learn to tell the difference between cooked and raw chicken,
wishing we were much younger or much older--
just please, God, not this messy, half-baked, 3am drunken monster in-between

I don't know who your father is,
but I may have an idea -- my boy is no
Hallmark movie star but he stayed with me
in my college one-bedroom for two weeks to
give me medicine and baths when I
couldn't breathe without pain,
he always calls and he always comes back, which is
much more than I can say for most men.
and I know that he'd do the same for you,
which is why I wouldn't be surprised if we married

anything borne of my being will certainly have
a sailor's mouth and a fire in her belly,
and I won't apologize for that, but I will apologize for the
men you scare away with the boy-cut, shoulder muscles, and 6-inch blade in your pant-pocket--
even with tails between their legs they make me crazy,
crazy because they tell me
the womb that will bear you makes me weak,
makes me a doll, a pretty little thing,
and I let them
convince me that you, the existence of you, is my failure to neuter myself numb,
to be great,
my white flag, my conviction and the disintegration of my
mask of competence

if you are reading this,
my daughter,
you must instead be my greatest victory,
proof of my strength and my sacrifice, my selflessness,
proof that the men in this world have no knowledge of us,
and every person that I have been in my life
is now for you, is part of you, and has loved you.
I love you with bearing grease underneath my fingernails,
mud in my mouth, and a 6-inch blade on my hip,
I love you with daisy chains on my wrists singing showtunes
at a bonfire by the lake.
I love you in heartbreak and in pain,
I love you in fury, and in comfort,
I love you in the safe embrace of the man who may later be your father
and I love you with the love my mother has for me

we will both be gone at some other intersection in time
but the love I have for you transcends our mortality,
and is already etched into something beautiful and beyond

I want a million pictures of the moment I'm kissing your cheek
to see what I look like in love,
and I want to see their faces flinch
just a little at the red sparks
popping and jumping between us

I want your black curly hair on my pillow cases and
in between my fingers while you're driving up
and down hills, face brightened by the city lights in the distance
that make you quiet and lean over the steering wheel in awe

I want to wake up with you on the pull-out in your parents'
living room, to the rushing sound of the ocean you grew up on,
biking up and down the coast,
your freckled nose and collection of memories just a little smaller

I want to sing you to sleep every night,
but not as badly as I want to watch you play guitar,
fingers remembering, listening,
I know you can tell when it sounds beautiful
and see the scarlet flames licking
up my neck and ears when I hear it too

I want to hear you say "hello, Little One" to toddlers
swinging their arms and grinning at your soft warmth
every day of my life

I want to dance with you, dead tired, half naked in the quiet
early hours of the morning

I've never been afraid of you and I never will be

I love you and no distance will change my mind

I want you and as we grow up together I'll only want you more