mattress stained with blood
nightgown hanging from a crooked branch
you look as if you’ve died and never got to Heaven
because your toes are stoved and purplely black
and i set my house on fire because your touch already feels like flames
it felt familiar
and although i hate your guts
somehow i escape my house unscathed in a plaid skirt in the middle of the midwest
and i assume you’ve relocated me from the scene of your crime
i scream into the smoky air
your sentences choke me—continually repulsed by the audacity you have to speak.
disappear, you vapid creature.

I cannot explain all the pathetic measures
my eyes will take to avoid your gaze,
all the paths my legs will journey to avoid bumping into you on my way home.
All the ways I knead my hands to the bone and all the toothpick excuses skewering my tongue.
And I cannot explain the way your presence deflates something inside my chest.
I don't know what to do with all that empty space. It echoes.
I fill it with the thimble's worth of pride that I scrape together,
every meager flake of validation I pick from the floor. I shovel slopping handfuls of sawdust
to try and soak up some of the shadows
but everything dissolves in that oily void, green and hideous.
God, it echoes, and everyone hears it.
I muffle it with my radio silence.
I look at you and I see everything I hate about myself
under a microscope.
Every blemish, every scar, every gaping hole
that you lack.
Stop, look. Here. Wrong.
Hear?
I blind myself with radio silence.
I don’t know how to live with an eternal reminder that I am incomplete.
You, and the place you hollowed without even knowing it.
Green and monstrous.
It echoes and everyone hears it.
I love you, but I cannot explain my radio silence.

All the time
I hear it
He said to me
Sweetie be a
Sweet thing
for me

It's 11:05pm
I'm just leaving your new home
Driving 57 miles back to mine
And the dark blue sky
Reminds me of that chilling water
And the bright clouds reflecting the city lights
Reminds of those waves
I was running towards them as fast as I could
To feel like the wind was taking me with it
To break the heavy chains of our pain
We had lost touch with being alive
We were zombies holding eachother's rotting minds
But in this moment,
You were taking pictures of me
Emotions filling my face with color again
And I was free, euphoric
Escaping my mind to feel the ocean
Did you feel that too?

Do you remember what it was like
To feel love
Be loved
To know our love?
Even if it only lasted for a short time
I would do anything to feel that again
It's unlike any I've felt before
And still have yet to find again
I thought I found it once
But then manipulation carved my heart out
And I remembered you:
How good you were
How sweet
How humble
How delicate you were with me

You were so vulnerable
So new to the world
And when we got together
You didn't get somebody
Who had a fresh start like you
I had been broken
Again and again
There was so much scar tissue
That I didn't believe I could be wounded
But I was wrong
And when I started to bleed
You watched it drain out of me
Become infected
And you couldn't stop any of it
But I knew you still loved me.

How did it get so bad?
My emotions were screaming
How long did this go on?
I couldn't see what was happening to you
Until you reached that breaking point
With me in my bedroom
When did it start?
Was it gradual?
Did it sneak up quietly?
So you couldn't see it coming?
You couldn't love anything anymore
You became numb for months
You were losing pieces of yourself
As I was building my puzzle again
You fell further away from reality
As I sought connection and found it
You lost touch with yourself
What you wanted
What you needed in life
I think that destroyed you
And your innocence
And your ability to love
How did I not see the magnitude of your pain?

When I texted you
You said you were good
But when I saw you
You couldn't lie to my face
I wondered
Who had checked in with you last
To see how you were doing
Now, the scar tissue has formed once more
After all the hard work I did
I had hoped so much
That you were doing okay too
When I told you how well I was doing
You started crying
I wasn't sure if that was because
You were happy for me
Or you realized how broken you still were

Hug me again like you did in the shed
I haven't felt that since I saw you last
And I know if you said that
It wouldn't mean the same thing
Because I'm the only one
You've ever really touched
And to think you spent your entire childhood
Never being touched
I used to get so frustrated
Because you wanted my touch all the time
But it never was enough or what you wanted
And later I realized
How could you have enjoyed it?
You were numb entirely

Driving back home is torture
It feels like Olympia all over again
All I want is to be in your arms
Snuggle me tightly in bed
Be my home again
This long dark road
Is lightened by stars
And I still remember
My fingers tracing your warm skin
The constellation of freckles on your arm
The intensity of your hugs
I never wanted you to let go
So I let go instead
8 months ago
And how I wish you were still my home

Know not what you know, it's true
   Though thoughts are yours
      Are concepts such?
         Is learning found?
            Be it breathed inward by yourself
         Or with locking lips
      No such life and thought
   Must first be instilled by this teaching within you
Ew

She's cute
She has purple hair
She bought a Jesus pen
For some reason
Can't wait to see it
She likes bands
Bands that I actually know
She compliments me
Even though I'm ugly
And she's a witch
Who speaks Spanish

why am i to spend 12 years of my life
learning the same history 12 ways
each year getting more into depth
about how straight, white, and cis,
"all" of history just happens to be
when in reality anything that was ever
deemed abnormal or harmful to america's image
just doesn't get taught.

all these years of being sheltered from the truth
about america the great
has left me with questions i'm scared will go unanswered
and so

I'd like to know which group of old white men
decided erasing history was a good idea
If i'm stuck learning about these so called achievements and revolutions which only came from the self proclaimed superiors
i'd like to know whose idea it was to forget about
The whips cracked in to bleeding black skin
Making it known that my ancestors were no more than a tool
No more than what white men, white masters made them in to
No more than a slave until 1865

I want to know who made it possible for my history teacher to ask me what my opinion on slavery is since i’m the only black kid in sight
When will they teach me why it’s okay for the 20 white kids in my class
To call me their ***** but it’s not okay for me to get mad about it

Please tell me how these people figured out
who all they should kindly choose to silence?
maybe they thought it's too much to cover in class
Since we have to have time to be taught about manifest destiny
And how Americans had every right to take land and lives
Because white men deserve to take what doesn’t belong to them
or maybe it's been deemed inappropriate
because they're too scared to admit
That America would rather hose down black kids
waiting for our skin to become clear and
praying for our melanin to wash off just so they would stop having to look at the skin they deemed sinful
than admit that America loves to make black people fearful.

When are we taught about who chose to write about all of
america's triumphs and good times but
somehow seemed to forget about the scars passed on to me from over 100 years ago
But didn’t know i had until i was ten years old.
And honestly that no longer surprises me i mean
America only speaks of cishet white guys.
and I bet you didn't know about very first gay pride.
It was a series of riots started because America decided
Loving who you want makes you unequal
And the only way to fix that is using force that’s lethal
Force that would leave lovers lives laying in the street like the never even lived
Force that led to June 28th through July 1st becoming riots that didn’t need to happen but the police couldn’t keep their privileged fingers off of gay people
But it’s fine because ignoring that part of history has become an American steeple.

At this point I know all the answers to every test asking about the history you feed us
In attempts to hide the truths of this country that wishes it never freed us
so stop teaching me the same
cis, straight, white history I've already
been taught 10 going on 11 years of my life
because i don't care about the men who wanted to keep my ancestors bound
Or the country that keeps trying to tell me that my love isn’t allowed
i care about the history they'll continue to ignore and erase.
i care about the history America begs me to forget.