I am from a loneliness
That I no longer claim.
I am from a gift of God—
Call it luck if you want, the kind
Of luck that saves, and ever since that
Ripe-old age of one I say
I am from Colorado.

I am from a father that couldn’t stay.
I am from a mother who couldn’t.
But they are not important.
To miss them, they’d have to be real to me,
Not Goldilocks, not Cinderella, not Little Red Riding Hood—
Not a fairy tale.

No, the important part is this:
I am from two parents who went through hell and
Prayed to God that they could do better, and did.
I am from two parents who did their best,
But their best was not always good enough.
I am from two parents with worn-down, stomped-on hearts
And still they kept on beating.
And still they kept on beating.

Everything came down to this—
Everything came down to me.
But I am not a Lego flower built of blocks,
Generations of too-bright, too-wide, too-tight smiles
Meanwhile both hands in a bear trap.
No, I am a flower grown up from the dirt.
I am the blood rushing through me every time I put
Pen to paper.
I am stubborn softness, smart and stupid, everything and nothing.
I am what I longed to be and what I feared becoming.
I am an ocean, the deep blue fading to dark.
I am an open book written in code.

But I hope one day, dear God, I hope
That one day I’ll be brave.
One day I’ll stand on solid ground
And find a hill worth dying on.
I want a home with a willow tree,
A house built in the branches.
I want two kids to chase around, walls
Filled with laughter and messes and warmth.
And God, I want to hear my footsteps
On the floor of a courthouse, briefcase in hand.
I want to be something, I want to be someone
And heaven knows that is what I will be.

A mind like a mess, just a tangle of thoughts,
I am everything that I ever loved, lived, and lost.

There is no darkness.
I mean this symbolically,
But also quite literally.

There is light
Constantly all around you,
Flowing through you.

Spectrums you can see,
Spectrums you don't.
But are you able to?

Crazy, crazy, crazy.
It is tiring trying to tackle this Q stuff,
From a first person perspective.
All this far out quasi side-history,
Drenched in hate of every kind.
Divisive as all hell,
A kind of game within itself
To distance us from each other more
Rather than bring us close.
Together we stand, divided we fall
In on ourselves as like
A house of cards

I've never had the privilege to be
the main character
never enough for a leading role

always bleeding plain red
instead of magic

I am less than the sum of my parts,
I am glue,
Holding things together is what I do,
Always in the background I stay unseen,
Always in the places inbetween.

I am less than the sum of my parts,
I am glue,
Without me there wouldn't be any you,
Always in the dark but staying strong,
Always, I've been there all along

“What’s your name again?”
He asks me.
“Have we met before?”
He asks me.
Yes we’ve met.
I remember the first time I saw you up close.
I was too scared to look into your eyes so I just looked at your hands.
I could’ve looked at them all day.
They were beautiful.
Not in a soft and polished kinda way,
but a strong and rough way.
It’s like they told stories of your manhood and all I wanted to do was put them up to my face and listen to what they had to say.
But you ask me…
“What’s your name?”
I guess you were all business.
Filming for your job and I was just a prop.
A nameless
plain
unimportant
prop.
You had to edit over an hour of footage with me in the background.
Twirling the ribbon in my Bible scared that if I looked up I would just stare at you.
You had to type my name.
First and last.
But you ask me…
“What’s your name?”
I thought of us before even laying eyes on you.
I remember the first time I saw your face.
We’ve only been going to church together for three months now.
I’ve only been staring at you every Sunday for three months now.
But you ask me…
“What’s your name?”
Your profile popped up on my Facebook and I thought it was fate.
I wasn’t looking for your profile.
I didn’t even know your name yet.
I lost sleep because of you.
It wouldn’t surprise me if I said your name in my sleep.
I checked your socials like an old man checks the morning paper.
But you ask me…
“What’s your name?”
Don’t worry about my name,
if you don’t know it now you will never learn it.
If you wanted to remember my name you would have.
So don’t waste my time with asking me now.
“WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”
My name is worthless
unlovable
invisible.
But I don’t say any of this out loud.
I tell you my name while I feel my heart tighten.
My name is…
But once I tell you my name you repeat it like it’s a question.
It’s like a song I want to play on repeat until I get sick of it.
I want to hear you say my name over and over and over again.
But you won’t.
You have another girl’s name to say.
While you forget mine,
I remember yours like a bad song I wish I never heard.
A song that’s so bad it’s good.
What’s my name…
Maybe my name isn’t worth remembering.

She's scratching.
Unresting and ruthless.
She's crackling and creaking.
Background.
She's sneaking up from behind and bares her teeth.
A horrible grin.

She's ripping my head wide open to grub her ugly nest.

She's
Dipping my eyes in fog.
Stuffing my ears with mud.
Filling my mouth with silence.

She's building her cursed nest.
She's cocooning herself in.

You can't see her.
Yet she's still there lurking.

She's waiting for the right moment.

Then
She will fill your eyes with tears
She will fill your mouth with lies.
She will fill your heart with pain.

She's waiting.