"Metaphors are Dangerous"
is something my mother said
To me recently while hovering breathless above
her calendar; waiting carefully between the spaces of functions, appointments, and birthdays. Blank.

I asked her why she had me.
What became of my first calendar,
my genesis, the foretelling of my arrival?

What was "god's plan" for that lifeless heap of events she threw away in an afternoon, after everything within it either happened or didnt? Was it whisked away to trash island, with the other spent husks that had the audacity of limited use?

Does it still exist?
Stained and useless, wretched paper
sprawled out in the sun. Has it been completely reformed? Sent out as several paper cups, a newspaper,  a birthday cap, a kite?

What would god think of "used" calendars? Would he? When he reached our day of being in the cosmos, did he look at us and say "you will be used or you will be nothing" and pin us to the wall? A useful but temporary tool?

Why do we begin something at all? Why must we blow the balloon up just to let it go? Is it still a "balloon" when it's lying limp in a stranger's field a mile away?

In my mother's silence I knew she had no answer for me, except that "metaphors are dangerous" as her hands full of paper-cuts flattened the page.

What does it matter if I chose to wear a ring
Silver and cold-blooded, fought hard to receive
To symbolize the one coiled around my heart

If I chose to order a drink
Of the poem you recite with smile and splendor
To symbolize you, miles away, my new year’s wish

If I chose to remain in your bed that morning
After your insensitive and heart-constricting decision
to symbolize a commitment to communication and forgiveness

If I chose to lock eyes and arms with you
In a hall teeming with energy contradictory to the average age
To symbolize overwriting painful past through contraband

What does it matter that I chose you
Implicitly and explicitly and wholly
if you didn’t choose me?

Goddess but I am modest
Your whole heart I hold
Trace it with my fingertip melt it into gold
We are abundant like our clothes on the floor
Loving you all on fours

Touch your pools of mocha claimed them as my own
Tainting my notion of love I've come to know
Was it all fantasy? What I previously believed
Or was I simply staring into a black hole
The unknown

But with you, we bridge the gap
Between the known and the yet to know
Love your tone, so deep and low
Hug me close until you have to go
Love me like I am Marilyn Monroe

I was going to compose a parallel poem
mirroring the ways you show you care
but you have made it evident
that I will never be your home.

You would
thoughtfully answer my never-ending stream of questions
carry me to bed with a blissful blanket of sleep and softness
grant me the honor of wearing anything you owned, and smile at my choices
actively correspond with me, more in the span of a few weeks than your standard for a lifetime
trust me to take care of your bright-green banana-of-a-boy
assist and twist and crack my spine further
track and plot my heartrate to find a trend in tempo and tone
and always provide the nearness I need to breathe
and feel
and be
myself.

I did not need to pen a poem
to know that you care, albeit reticent
but you have made it evident
that I will never be your home.

If a boy falls in love with a boy
and no one is around to hear it
does the boy really love at all?

But once the sound carries
and electrical pulses transfer
encoded messages are decrypted
and interpretation can never be taken back

But reign in the words
and clutch them tightly to your chest
and bite your tongue lest they escape
and interpretation can never be taken back

If a boy falls in love with a boy
and he does not want to hear it
was there ever any love at all?

I pour my suffering out
into my hand,
over your side,
so as not to
drown you.
We flow together,
we weep together,
we follow each other;
we oscillate between varying dimensions.
It is a state of languid frenzy.

You trap me; you keep me; you hurt me.
You are strong.
I hold you; I cling to you; I caress you.
I try to be gentle.
And the feeling
is divine:
the feeling of
your heart beating
alongside mine.

don't tell your boyfriend, baby...





















i'm your secret lover, come to me
touch my body and stay forever