the sky is a warm blanket, yet we
are inconsolable. wrapped and untouchable,
cloaked in isolation
desolation; this is not about crying anymore.
this is not about blood.
this is about ragged breaths, open pores,
mudstains. muddied legs wrapped up in pink
and white and flowered sheets. this is
about needing more. this is about
the hopelessness of the
search, despite and because of
the ceaselessness of the fight.

We will not be falling down anymore,
though our limbs turn jelly: this is about iron
spines. This isn't about eyes. This isn't about
weakness. This is about outshining the sun,
about the unflinching--
not wincing in the face of the truth.
This is not about invincibility:
this is
about

invulnerability.

To indite or
not
to indite;
there's really
no question.

I don’t want to become a Creative Writer because I usually suspect that being a Creative Writer is a lot like having a Pretty Face.

When I wake up at 7:24 instead of 7:00 like I always plan to, and my nearly empty journal falls out of my bed, and I look in the mirror at my vaguely pink eyes and that cowlick I have on the right side of my forehead, I do not feel Creative. I also do not feel like I have a Pretty Face. Mostly, I feel very tried, and frustrated that I am going to be exactly seven minutes late to work like I am on every Monday and Wednesday.

Men and people who were almost-men have told me that I have a Pretty Face. At the poetry things I have gone to, the presenters have called me some variant of Creative Writer. I smile with all of my teeth when they say it, because it is a compliment and I know that when I receive a compliment I am supposed to smile like this, a little crooked and a little coy and a lot humble, even though I know that I am only an occasionally creative writer with a face that is pretty in the right light with the right liquid eyeliner.

The trouble with Creative Writers is that their paper crowns start to make them recognizable to people. People recognize them and then they are forced to wave their pencils around like the conductors of a silent song with whatever rhythm is currently in style in the artistic world, and if they hit the wrong note, people tell them they don’t deserve that crown. That Creative Writer is a faker if I ever saw one, the people say. She pretends to be something special. If she wants to get to know you, she will probably tell you a poem instead of telling you what she means.

The trouble with Pretty Faces is that people get so angry at them that they get called fake, too, if they’re lucky. The first day that the Pretty Face shows up to her yoga class without makeup on, or with a friendly zit in the dimple on her chin, people do a lot of pointing. They point and snicker, because that is what we are supposed to do with pretenders. When the truth gets revealed, we like to publish headlines about it and jump up and down with our index fingers out, screaming that we knew it all along. We love to find out that other people’s good things are not real. I don’t know why that is, but I know it is true.

The people in charge rarely give you any power for your titles. The Creative Writer’s paper crown is usually one that she made for herself—you can tell because she gets really frustrated when it starts to sag, weighed down by an accidental cliché about boys’ tears or the rain. Paper disintegrates in water, did you know that? And the Pretty Face probably had a snaggletooth until she was thirteen, so she feels like a fraud even if no one has called her one this week.

I like reading stories and theories by writers who we all took a vote on and decided are definitely both authentically Creative and Important, even if we did not give them those titles until after they died and became noble corpses with hardly any face at all. Sometimes I think that we are incapable of calling anything important until it is gone. I like writing about them because writing about writers is a marvelous loophole—no one but other academics ever questions it, so the popular opinion stays on my side.

One time, a man at a bar in a yellow polo told me that my Face was not Pretty enough for me to laugh like such a tease. I wrote a poem about it and read it at a conference with a toothy mask on, people loved it, and then I decided I did not want that to be my livelihood.

if you are the first boy to love me* say, i am sorry you didn’t have anyone there when you were young. that the words you always needed to hear were so long in coming. i don’t believe no one wanted to hold you in their arms before, i bet they loved you but couldn’t show it. like you made their breath catch so they left your hands shaking, afraid to love the girl whose emotions ran deep like a well, whose heart was wide and open, who would come to know them better than themselves; afraid to let you in.

You were a girl they weren’t ready for but I, I will not be the same kind of foolish. I’ve been wanting to give you roses for the day you turned sixteen, but I can’t. Maybe in another life if I will be so blessed, younger we will meet again. For now instead I will plant you a whole garden. Am I a godsend? Was I what He intended for you? I have no idea but, you have been alone for so long it’s all your heart remembers. I know you are used to it, but I want to love you, and I will, for as long as you will let me. More than ‘i love you’, you are my life now, and i will plant new flowers every day, and we will water them together.

i.
i don’t want to cry* on my birthday but here we go again, thinking ‘god, it’s a mistake,’ is a mistake. god is a mistake? i’m tired; i come from the far-reaching corners of your heart and in front of you now i have to say, i found i didn’t belong there. the journey has tattered my clothes, and my head hangs low but i’m ready, papa. i’m ready for the next one. journeys that will make me better, better journeys ahead.

ii.
i will be okay; it’s not that hard. i will let my head go under the waves sometimes. i will let my hands fall. i will hold my breath but no one will see the struggle. let me be alone, i will be fine. i want to go deep sea diving with my broken pieces. —i’m lying, i’m not fine. i want to be in danger, i want to be uncertain and laugh.

iii.
tell god i’ve always been wanting to die young. he knows what ive prayed for. pray he knows what he’s doing. don’t want to get into the habit of hurting people but each year the list gets longer and as i grow taller does my heart get smaller to make room for all the stars to grow again. reborn in my lungs in my chest, a supernova. leave me hacking with a cough, heaving. give me the pain i feared when i was small, and when i am broken pour my night sky soul into space.

*give me back the universe.

5 8 15 20 24 29
SoHo seems nice this time
of year; although I am terrified of going
anywhere near a city that holds you in its hands and above me, too high
to me, you are New York. but when I walk down Central Park West my shadow clings to my shins
you scrape my skin with your breath and I feel hot July air that is trapped between your buildings – these subways are too stifling
I will let you lift up my skirt like he did, but only because I know that it’ll rain heavily the Chelsea Pier after.

1 17 23 25 41 47
Churchill
I think my eyes are permanently squinted; agonizing over the shape of your eyes and how they
relate to mine – even in the light you’re missing pieces, your rocks are crumbling away, you are sand – your grains hold words –
unmentionable, special, temptress, miss, you, nothing, work, in my dreams, diffuse, instantly, affection, with, you, stuck, darling, attention, far, vivid, feather, waking, wasted, sweet dreams, worth, wish, awake
I always feel my conscious wrap her delicate hands firmly around my throat and pour salt water into my eyes when you are in front of a screen, in front of me – I think maybe I should cut pieces of me
could I mail them to New York? to SoHo? you can curl up with them in bed and try to find the grooves where you fit in, or just fry me on the grill. Ideally, you should consume me so that I may never leave. only if –

15 18 30 32 40 42
I’ve been pinching and piercing my skin to prevent me from crying more often than
I sleep. I know it’s morbid and dramatic but being slaughtered by tears is not how I want
to spend my Saturday night. I’d rather see Basquiat on a wall or short films screened while I watch you instead. I would walk until my legs gave out and
trace one single finger along your spine. And here I am, grasping my skin between my fingers and pinching, squeezing you out – I can just scrape the excess off after you’re gone
tomorrow I plan on eating as many seeds as I can to grow flowers in my throat and have them sprout past my eyes so all I see are petals. They’ve been missing for a while. The weeds still cover
my stomach. If only when I thought of you I thought of flowers. Most of the time I see a hand reaching through the thickest fog. As I reach for you, all I hear are 35 words that cover me.

****, but don't ******,
Be hidden in plain sight,
No matter where the evil lives,
How powerful the evil may be,
The night shall come to slay the body of evil and banish it's soul to Seclum.

I don't stalk the night,
I am it.
I am not a predator.
I hunt them.

I do not fear the light,
I blind it.
I am not a monster,
I scare them.

My skeleton is my body
and Su-Fan is my name.
Beware it!

You're not easy to read, and that scares the hell out of me.

Because you see, I'm a writer.
And when I can't read one's story, I begin to feign my own.

And well, I've never had a happy ending.

My mind is its own body
of water, fluid emotion
at mercy to the moon
Sometimes rapid as
the churning ocean,
unharnessable, dams
each waterwheel I build
as if equilibrium was Hell,
& then
Sometimes vapid as
a stillwater lake, where
peace is dawn's ripple,
days' first surface breach
of a fish upon fly bait.