My community is like a day at the beach.
The warm water melts away the ****** seagull calls
As we build sandcastles large enough for the biggest
And most ridiculously hard to say umbrella that we can
Manage to stitch together from our broken homes.

We play volleyball with our hope
The biggest beach ball we can muster
Our net constructed of ally weave
And it’s got flames and it’s super bad-*** and ****
But nets are only nets
And nets can only do so much
You can’t play games without
The people.

We ride jet skis away from sharks
Sharing the strong towers
Of our middle fingers
Because **** sharks
I know only some of them are dangerous
But after you see a body floating in the water
Like a buoyed tomb
It’s hard to forget the biting.

The net asked us once
Why we never have a funeral
I guessed that it didn’t realize that
We don’t have the time
To bury all the bodies
That’s like
Asking us to count the sand
Like telling us to collect the waves
Like begging us to dry an ocean of tears

But
These aren’t tears
They are a body count
These aren’t sickles of sand
They are our ancestors’ ashes
These aren’t warm waves
but walls of black blood
And it’s here
Amongst the ashes
And blood
That we build our sandcastles

I look around in mine
It is insulated in white
The black blood
Only begins to broach
The moat outside
If I never bothered
To look
I might never see it

How much time
Must we spend in
Our sandcastles
Before we can
Smell the blood
Outside

How deep do we
Have to dig our holes
Before we silence the screams
Outside

Why are we just
Looking at the walls
Why aren’t we looking
Outside

We are not royalty
We are not arbiters of
Ash and blood
This is NOT a
Game

Net’s don’t matter when
All the players are dying.

How many sandcastles
Do we have to build
Before we remember
The stone riots that
Built them

Be spiked heel shoes
Be rock and brick
Be broken windows
Be shattered bone

Raise your fist against
The biting tide
Swim against the sharks
Until you bleed enough
To drown
Them

Be blood
Be ash
Be broken homes
Be ****** murals
In the street
Be white sandcastles
Then tear yourself down
Until you get back to the
Stone Walls of your foundation

You know what, ever mind
**** sandcastles
They seem too much like sharks
anyway

This heart isn’t hallow
This emptiness is just
As full as it can get
Like drowning a sealed
Water bottle full of
Oxygen

My heart breathes like a water boarding
Screams for first dates
That don’t come
Crushes over girls
Who ask me out to coffee so
They can brag about having coffee
With a cute guy to me
While the two of us
Have coffee

Smile
Do not show the hallow
Do not let the wind being knocked out of you
Whistle off of your rib cage
Like love notes being shredded

Remember
This is just coffee
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
Coffee hardly ever happens
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
You’ve literally had a crush on this girl since
Before you actually met her
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
There might not ever be another
Coffee

Remember
This is just your life
They don’t write love stories for hallowed out hearts
Or at least hearts that are only full of an outlining
Of oxygen
With skin singed from dysphoria
I hear it’s not good theater
If the main character looks like
A burn victim—
A bit indistinguishable
Like someone threw
Scalding coffee over your gender
Or tried to fill your heart with it

Breathe

Remember getting over her
It wasn’t hard
After all
It was just coffee
And it wasn’t like you
Had hope to fill your heart with
It was too full of out-linings
It’d be like stuffing a net with sand
Or trying to pour coffee into a
Shattered cup

Breathe

Let the broken shards of the
I-guess-this-really-is-just-coffee cups
Fill your lungs
It’s easier than breathing in another night
Of lonely
At least then you know
There was coffee
And glasses that fell apart
In tune with the shattering
Of your heart
So human
To lose something
By breaking it

Breathe

Remember
There was another coffee
And another girl
And this time we didn’t drink
From busted cups
But in something sturdy
Like a glass of hugs
That held the future of more time together
And had teabags of hope attached to strings
Of fingers that interlocked with hers
On the couch during our
Second date

My god
I know we had on shoes
With rubber souls
But that night your
Fingertips felt electric
Like a coffee cup with
An outlet in it
And the fork of my fingers found
The shock inside of you
It was warm like
Body heat
Or setting yourself on fire
*******
I never knew holding hands could make
My burned heart
Feel like a bonfire
Of shredded love notes
And shattered cups

I squeezed your hand a bit too hard
Like ripping coffee out of a sponge
I hoped you didn’t feel
How desperately I needed to hold
Onto the lifeboat rope of your arm
Because I’ve been drowning
In shards of glass from
I-guess-this-really-is-just-coffee cups
My whole life

I wish that second dates
Came with instruction manuals
Because I had no idea what to do
So at 2am
When you said you needed to leave
I walked you out to your car
And while I never read an instruction manual
I know that was the right move
Because you turned
And smushed your face into mine
Like I was stealing cotton candy in my mouth

I’m glad you were a good kisser
Because I know that kissing cotton candy
Has to be awkward as ****
But I hope that you at least found
Something sweet somewhere between
My lips

My god
How great a thief you were
When I checked my breath
The next morning
It was gone
Electrocuted from my lungs
And now I knew why kids
Keep shoving forks
Into outlets
It’s because the electric feels ******* incredible
Like taking a bath in oxygen
Or drowning in an ocean of inhales
Or fighting off a horde of dragons by
******* breathing on them

So Breathe

Remember
Cotton candy may seem sweet
But it doesn’t last forever
Eventually
Everyone can’t bare to have
Another bite

Awkward-at-first-kisses became
Awkward kisses
Breath kept coming home early
And dragons began to breathe
Back at me

I wasn’t surprised when you told me
You started seeing someone
It made sense
I always kept too many dragons around
With screaming hearts
And shattered coffee cups
Burning everything

I wasn’t surprised when I cried that day
It made sense
I had all of my oxygen back now
It was the only kind of breath
I knew

You see, oxygen flows through the heart and
Circles through the veins
I know oxygen
Like shattered coffee cups
And broken hallows
Filled with oceans of air

I guess that’s why
I set my heart on fire
Because maybe
It was never
There.

I hate it all so much.
This hatred burns and scalds my skin
from the outside in and rips away flesh
like picking rotted flowers from my bones.

My clothes
are no longer here.
They left ashes in their place
a slow wake of fire dust
encircles me
like its digging out a tomb.

I hear the cackling of the
sturdy floorboards beneath
my feet begin to snap.

I hear the laughter breaking free
from the splinters and feel the spike
of their railroad pike skin pierce me
ripping away failing flesh
like train cars
until I am just cooked bone and hate
and spilled muscle.

My blood begins to soak into the oak
of the earth’s soil.
I hear it boil.
It funnels down through dirt like drain-o.
I peer into the hole like an open casket.
I see the soul of the planet so like me.
All cooked bone and boiled blood.
All rotted flower and liquid muscle.
It coalesces into an ocean of metal magma.

It looks like it knows how to hate like me.
The wakes wave like an invitation.
I feel the gravity of my skeletal frame
pull back into an arched bow
and let go.
I fall like an arrow on fire.
My cooked bone crashes into an alloy ocean
and shatters like fine china
I am fire dust in the form of crashed skeleton
and rotten flower.
I fuse into this lake of burning wakes
until the flames of our hate
soak into a bonfire of failed flesh and metal

I am home here
There is no armament of wood and laughter
There is only hate, blood, bone, metal, and rotted flower

It looks like heaven.

This body was birthed without an
attachable heart

Love won't even try to cling

To a machine

Already falling
apart.