In the aftermath, I lay across my adolescent
comforter in the faded spot, hoping to soak up any
remnants of a sun that refuses
to show its face today.

Raindrops stick to my window,
spattered from juvenile tyranny,
born out of temperamental
tempests that literally manifest
from nowhere. These are the tears

I wish I could cry, for even the sky
prays it could hide from the tumult.

my childhood was removed from me
inside of a blue mustang
and what remained after that
I tried to barter off the highest bidder
but I grew,
not up,
but forward
further away
slowly releasing
hands of defiance
fists chock full of hopeless words
like anger, the flavor that aches the bone,
the cold kind,
more barren than the green of Christmas lights
glimmering off the icy veneer of a white picket fence
overeager, in the apathy of theatrics,
to strip off the remainder
because the empty feeling that followed
might one day
make a decent poem

My hand searches for yours
under the table
in this semi-crowded place.
Our friends chat amongst themselves,
their words like white noise,
but they glance at me and you,
expecting you to make a move.
No one sees what we are doing,
but they know.

They know.

They grin and give you a thumbs-up.
I sigh,
half out of raging embarrassment,
half out of content.

My hand has found yours,
but now my lips want to do the same.

This is a poem for nobody’s eyes
About my students
my flowering black and brown baby girls
more bud than human, saying all singsong how
black is ugly ugly ugly
holding their arms up to
one another, comparing hues
About the instant I realized
I loved women too
and sagged hard against my bedroom door while
dread and hope danced a strange dance
in the pit of my gut
About the college kids I see in class everyday
popping Aspirin and Xanax and the pill
with their headphones and angry publicness and
******* ******* **** this
and notebooks and pens and
soft privateness and
I love you I need you I need you
About the boy I couldn’t speak to for years
without feeling sick or small or unrequited
About Audre, Toni, and Maya teaching me
how to start revolutions with a word
About how I dream again and again
of kissing the girl I am in love with
and sometimes
we are the in the dark and sometimes
we are laughing and sometimes
I am moving breathless
into the room saying
I have never loved you more than I do at this moment
and lips are on lips are on lips
About how I can’t look at this one
pink nightgown because I was wearing it
when my father said he was cheating and
too many tears fell on those
tiny satin cherries
About Holden Caufield and that
******* merry-go-round
About a crazy, unquiet and
utterly illuminated self
Me, spoken yet unspoken

A yell for the child comes with momentum
It shakes a creak out of each elderly step and surrounding glass fixture
Wailing wakes the set of mahogany stairs before stopping at the moat of the dudette’s dungeon

Kaboom, it kicked the door in on the dream

Enter a flow of sunlight
Now visible dancing off the sweaty leaves and onto the walls of the hallway
Leaping onto the eyelids of our beholder
She turns to face the wall
This empty vessel isn't ready

The yelling quickly becomes relevant
As it Sharpens into an irritating spear  
Creating unwanted foramen
Making mesh out of the impermeable cushion enveloping the chrysalised girl

The parent is a lackluster alarm clock that she bought
But still wants to beat the **** out of.
Though they serve their purpose
the half conscious tend to be ungrateful

A smile breaks open now
knowing such noxious noise is futile Fighting the lull that was already present in the room.

Going through the first motions her feet find a base
and her socks slide dangerously over splinters and thornish nails peaking out of the floorboards
The drums of her feet meeting the stairs announce her arrival.

On the first floor there awaits a vision of her childhood
Her father watching programs and eating breakfast with Charles Osgood and his correspondents
Mother making moves towards the car.

She’s surprised
The sweet smell tricked the girl into believing adventure land had been relocated to her kitchen.


She witnesses Bands of fibrous smoke slide off of the bacon
And harden as happiness on the rims of her nostrils
Her hunger whispers clear thoughts and primitive instincts from her core
And a shell of rubber pellets is released to ricochet around in the girls belly like a couple of quarters in a piggy bank -
Wants reverberate and drive up her throat
Driving her hands to the cooler of the three tired skillets

She does a quick but thorough survey of the stove top eyes hitting every grease patch and
Yellow egg puddle worth avoiding

Sitting at the galaxy black table
Jaw tensing against its will
Gums sweating and shocked anxious
Tastebuds wiggling into the room left available by the imagination
Eager on ripping into fattening pleasure

Osgood leads them into their moment of Zen to be ended at the pace of the subject
Father different from daughter
Daughter different than the mother.

My mother would rather have me
quietly contemplating worldly nothings
instead of losing my godly everythings
in turn-up bottles tonight. My mother
has learnt too carefully to frame
newspaper tragedies into final family
photographs waiting to happen. Poet,
who drove you home last night and
at what time and why night and
you've gotta realize when you're
taking the whole art thing too far. Poet,
you have to learn how to listen you're
naive you're young you don't know what
life really is. Poet, look at me when I'm talking
to you. Look at me when I'm talking to

t’s hard, to use the method of escapism to deal with the reality around

For writing, music, games, art, reading, can be mesmerizing to distract

But sometimes it isn’t enough

And you still have to cry into a pillow alone at nights

Though it may sound as melodrama, the harsh reality is it’s true

For many are not lucky to have grown up in good homes

To have had loving and caring parents

That pain sits like a razorblade pillar in your stomach

And your tears sting your cheeks like saltwater acid

Then you have to muster up strength, and keep your hopes on an even level

And for those that are the unfourtunate ones, always know that you are wonderful

And that your cage isn’t permanent

O
The Who
belted out adolescent
stress
through edgy
guitar riffs
like they still had
pimples
long after they
became
famous.

And me
I
I
often forget
that
I'm
I'm
supposed to be
becoming
a
Man
or something
like that.

My hands are bleeding surely:
my guitar pick isn't my fingers
but soon I'll write these nonsensicals
in blood. But nobody should scream
out for that. Nobody should buy
my words like rock-albums.
Nobody should ask Who
is he and Who
am I because

me
I
I
often forget
that
I'm
I'm
supposed to be
becoming
a
Man
or something
like that.

While
The Who
O
The Who
belt out
out adolescent
stress
through edgy
guitar riffs
like they still have
pimples
long after  
becoming
famous

like Who?

This age has been to me a fist in the abdomen.
Rough. But sweet, too.

18, and the first line of my journal emerges like a rebellious blush, longing and delinquent. It sits in its designated place with blue ink honesty that terrifies that breath out of me. I must keep writing. I must push away from my confession. I must ignore the panic rolling in my chest. Love, in this moment, nauseates me.

18, and I am running my thumb over a round scar on my left wrist with an emotion that is not quite sadness but perhaps disappointment, for not being brave enough, for not putting that blade away before it was too late, for letting myself down. I’m supposed to be a feminist. I’m supposed to A Strong Woman who is big enough to love herself at all times. But I slipped, I fell hard. I let myself visit a place I never should have, and here is the evidence. A little continent of puckered skin I stroke while apology quivers in my fingers.

18, and I’m in my bedroom by the window with the blinds raised so I can see all the stars. I’m soft and sad and laughing. I am thinking of a girl.

18, and everything aches under the weight of awful silence. I wonder what it’s like to be normal. One of those happy faces in the grocery store choosing between black and cannellini beans, ignorant of the sickly fog clinging to my being. I isolate myself from everyone, because who the hell would want to deal with the horrible mess of a creature that I am? I can’t even look in a mirror without wanting to gag. I am my own heaviest burden.

18, and there are no words for what I feel. The warm shock of electricity when my fingers find hers and curl around them is much like a hopeful satellite alighting on a foreign planet. Only this planet isn’t dust or crater or rounded emptiness. This planet is knuckle and pulse-point and heat. This planet is divinity, created from two-sided love so entwined it is one indivisible entity. I sit here in the dark, while a fullness of light breaks open in every part of me.

18, and all I am in a person repeatedly dragging herself to her feet.

18, and I will not let my body be the target of insecurity a moment longer. I look at myself with softness and this is when I see how my inadequacies are actually a language of fierce beauty, how my stretchmarks flow over my hips and thighs like the Nile, delta after brave, pale delta. I glow with gratitude for these marks, these signs of growth.

18, and I am resting on the root of a great tree beside the love of my life. There are daisies in her hair and I think, if vital organs could spurt wings, my heart would rise right out of my chest.

18, and graduation burns like a bittersweet beacon. I smile and hug people and say goodbye, but what I am really saying is, “Watch me.” What I am really saying is, “Someday I will be nothing more than a humble relic in your memory, but today I am now, and now, and now.”

18, and I want to hold onto everything. My flaking yellow nail polish, letters given to me to send me bravely on my way, the shaking of my heart as I square my shoulders and step from velvet darkness into light, the precise slant of the sun as it leaves us for another hemisphere, this chest-heaving mess of adrenaline and perspiration and ache, tears I won’t hold back, pansies blooming on my windowsill, the symphony of myself growing bright and loud and lovely enough to fill the walls of every place I set foot in, like ink dropped in a waiting water glass, endlessly expanding.