sometimes she daydreams about life the way i do about death. it's ironic, i know: black and white aren't meant to be grey and the rumbling hum of expletives digging into mauve lips pass through like desaturated light to translucent statures. it makes everything seem sweeter than it looks. she thinks the ache feels lukewarm, just like those half-hearted smiles she gives out like presents on a holiday, and she may be right. pain is not cold, it covers your entire heart with microwaved fingers, leaving burn marks that leave chars and ashes. snaps the purple heartstrings and clumsily tries to mend it.

(i love you because you're corporeal, she murmurs, you keep me sane)

she's spider-webbed, sung gossamer and silk while her bar lines drip with ink. and she seems moonstruck—because of me she says and blooms throughout my epiphanies. fancies herself a ghost, a wisp, something ethereal that lingers on my lips like a kiss. and she lingers, oh she does. toppling from the skies and collapsing into my rib-cage, she stays, blushing rose-like and thriving. velvet and constellations of blood clots patter against her skin. it blooms like she blooms, a paint splattered canvas meant for all to see.

When I close my eyes, it's like stepping into a whole new world. White flecks in the darkness flash green and blue, the blackness bleeds red and I feel the sun warming denim. It makes me feel as though I'm at a standstill. Like this is a dream, a form of aesthetic that isn't quite my flavor and I have no place but an intrusion.

I hear wind chimes in the far distance, like a sparkle made up of sound waves and I suddenly wonder if the neighbors down the street are feeling this way as well. Or if it's just a fantasy, if this world is just a daydream away and we're the blurred figures we never remember but always see, like how people from dreams are real life people you've seen before. I like to imagine ourselves as those people, forgotten but lingering in the mind of whoever is staring down at us, if there is one anyway.

I find it easy to breathe: no weight down my chest or numbness crawling up my esophagus. My leg is swinging, my eyes are scanning and I should be enjoying this day like a normal person should.

But I'm not. Not because my heart is slowing down or that my mind is pulling me apart but because I know that whatever I do there is a filter that blocks me. Because even if I act happy and normal there's still a screen between us, made up of stigma and prejudice. Because I'm me.

I hear a baby's cry, ebbing into laughter and I wonder if I can be that innocent, that happy again. If I can be content with my life.

I smile sadly. "No."

The first time I bloomed
was under the threadbare covers
on my silk mattress.

It was odd.
I mean, the utter controversy
of the two cloths clashed teeth to bone,
gums to tendons.
Made by the same mother,
abandoned by both.
(I guess in some way they were meant to be)

I grew out of childish fantasies
years ago, shredding it
like satin snakeskin,
but I can't help but wonder
if lukewarm serendipity
and blushing luck
were controlled by not a higher power
but our own heartstrings.

It would be an interesting sight,
to see braided desaturated yarn
entwined in our limbs like a tangled puppet.
Does that mean we are controlled?
Or perhaps the "control"
we see is merely an illusion,
easy to rip through like tissue paper.

I remember that my body burned.
From ever-growing light coiled around
split ends and twisting fingertips.
The light was skintight,
another layer of my skin.
My bones unfurled,
eyes glowing like fairy lights,
weeds creeping out of the fringes of my chest cavity.
Hands turned into bouquets of lilies,
pedals waving farewell,
why, I could not say, but it's metaphorical.
Kissing the wounded parts of my soul,
I grew bundles of baby's breath and chrysanthemums.

The second time,
while my hair grew into flames
and the hinges of my heart
oxidized into green,
my mother found out.
What she thought was a childish misunderstanding
grew into a maze of prejudice and disgust.

I knew, my mother never liked it, from the start.
Perhaps she was stuck,
in the past,
in the mindset,
in the fear,
in the normality,
and this,
this was not normal.

She sneered at me and my father
shook his head in disappointment.

Twang in my chest,
I tried to atone for my sin,
but I stopped halfway
because I realized even if I tried,
the growth would only speed and this time
the flowers would be blackened and dead.

The third, I tried to stop it.
I couldn't survive another heartbreak
so I folded it away,
into twos and threes
until the creases refused to crease
and rice paper cracked
into three million pieces
of jagged bones.

I never knew destruction was beautiful until then.

The fourth, I gave up on my reconciliation.
Why try when it wasn't going to work anyways?
I waited out the furnace in my heart
and for the first time,
wondered why I couldn't be normal.

I was meant for a happy ending,
driving into a sunset with a boy by my side
and it didn't make sense
(but ironically it did).
Girls couldn't like girls.

But I did, I did.
And though my mother screamed obscenities
and my father looked at me in disgust,
I could not throw it out
like bottles of spoiled milk.
I could no less cut out my own being
than stop this.

And through my suffering I surmised
that if this was seen so revolting,
then I should go down for it.
A life for a life,
that's what I thought.

But was it worth it?
I do not know.
But me, me who loves as much as I hate---
I cannot cut this out of me.

And maybe, just maybe---
even as I fade like the waning moon under my parents' hatred,
and this thing inside of me is cherished and kept inside
the hearts of others
---maybe it's alright.

Maybe I will be okay.