I dread being your target.

You taught me
to stand by my gun,
and yet,
you've always
called the shots
long before
they were fired.

Pull the trigger,
there she goes.
Sticks and stones
may break my bones,
but you never
mentioned bullets.

When we chance
upon each other
years later,
you will ask me

          do you still write?

and I will answer

           of course I do.

you took my heart
with you when you left,
not my hands.

tell me
how to be enough
for myself.

You think no one has noticed
how you’ve been pick-pocketing pain
as you pass through crowds.
Usually misery loves company,
but you try to avoid dealing it out.
“No one deserves to be treated this way,”
is the kind of drug you need to be selfish about.
But you forget this applies to you, too.
Intentionally.
So you bundle the bits and pieces
in the nook in your chest,
where they pulse hungrily,
almost brutally.
But you don’t mind.

The only time you ever mind
is when you slice yourself open,
pouring out your darkest parts
right there,
on the bathroom floor.
Bottling up the hurt in mugs,
vases,
anything you can find, really,
for later use.
They’re overflowing now,
from what I’ve heard.
Barely able to contain all the weight
you wear upon your shoulders.

But some burdens shouldn’t
be carried,
or sold,
shelved away in unassuming little mason jars
in the back of your mind.
Some burdens have expiration dates.
Some things you need to let go of.

I have seen the way you collect scars
like passport stamps,
so you never have to speak.
They tell the stories of all you’ve been through,
cruel reminders that there’s
nowhere
on this earth you can run to
to escape this kind of heartache.
Instead, you document
every tear.
Every blow.
I bet I could even find some lashes
that aren’t even your own
printed on your skin
like a problem
you can never work out.

Life isn’t that simple, dear.
You can’t always solve for x.
There isn’t always an easy answer.
It’s best to leave some things undefined,
because some things you aren’t meant to fix.
And some things don’t want to be fixed,
no matter how hard you try.
You can stretch your arms
as wide as you’d like,
and you still wouldn’t be able to cradle
all the broken hearts in this world.
Believe me, I’ve tried.

I wish I had looked you in the eye
when I told you the truth.
When I said
Enough.
Put down the blade,
the only blood on your hands
is your own.
You’re staining your future rouge,
and those types of smears
don’t wash out with time.

But the lights were turned out,
and it’s hard to face the mirror
in the darkness.

A portrait of captivity:

Freedom with terms and conditions,
Strings attached.
Poison from a silver spoon.
It is a diamond-studded collar and gilded leash.
A decorative noose,
hanging by a golden thread.

It is a cage,
walls and mirrors
in place of iron bars.
Locked doors and missing keys.
Dead ends.
This is what it is to be cornered.

This is what it looks like to be trapped:
Always moving forward,
and two steps back.
Knowing that the world turns
in circles.
Never really getting ahead,
only around a bend.

It is to stand at a podium
voiceless,
clawing at your throat,
fixating over bits of fractured sentences.
Too many asterisks,
never enough periods.
Scrambling after stray letters
and broken thoughts.
Never complete.

What is worse:
To be unheard
or to be misunderstood?
Perhaps,
it is to be ignored.
Loud does not mean powerful.
If anything,
the more I scream,
the more powerless I become.

I have been cut so many times,
Again.
Again.
Again.
that now when I bleed,
I am amazed at how it is
I can still possibly feel this sensation.
This pain.
This searing numbness.

I am hollow,
and this restlessness torments me.

It is weeping with dry eyes.
Drowning with your lungs full
so that every breath you inhale
tastes like fire.

It is a starless sky,
infinite blackness as far as the eye can see.
Beautiful,
but still Hell.

A spotless, immaculate silence -
the kind you could not fill
even if you tried.

But most of all,
it is a carpet heart.
Patchy and well-worn in some places,
trampled underfoot too many times.
But tread lightly, love.
Watch your step.

It is shifting.

I was awake at dawn today. My alarm rang out like a siren, somewhere in between cacophony and a symphony, but I greeted it anyway because it has been so long since I woke up in the morning and didn't want to drown myself in my covers because I am afraid that the woman in the glass will stare back at me with those boxcar eyes of hers, holding everything and nothing in her gaze, hopping years like stations and letting life pass in one transcendent blur. I smiled at her today. She smiled back.

3.

What it feels like to be a phoenix: my lungs were on fire, smoldering and collapsing with every breath as my heart and feet pounded in a rhythm so deafening I forgot to worry about being worried. A breeze ruffled the secret hollows of my body like it was preparing me for flight and I couldn't help but imagine that I was made of feathers and song. The evening sun seeping into my eyes, sweat trickling down my neck, every inch of me in so much pain that nothing else mattered except this high and the cushion of grass that embraced me at the end of the path when I flopped backward in exhaustion.

2.

I fell in love with E. South Fork Drive again. If this city is alive, then this street is the lifeblood, one large vein pulsating with noise and laughter and light amidst a greater network of memories and emotions that would put even the most epic of love stories to shame. I danced in the middle of the road in a series of twirls and skips that came back to me like muscle memory as the children clapped, following the girl who heard a melody they couldn't. Their parents, all dark circles and sleepless nights, only nodded in gratitude, and in that moment, I wondered when I first learned that all good things come to an end. The old widow who lives alone in the big house at the end of the lane must've known what I was thinking from the way she mirrored my expression, but she said nothing, only "don't stop on my account."

1.

on the phone he asks me if I’ve been seeing anyone lately
in a parallel universe where pride does not taste of cough syrup
and we are still paper dolls
weightless and so hopeful and short of breath
I would have painted murals on the backs of his eyelids
as an explanation
I would have admitted that I’ve been seeing ghosts
rise up from the cracks in the floorboards
and they have warm hands
familiar only in a dependable absence of familiarity
that I take solace in
because we are both here and not
both incidentally veiled in the irony of transparency

                                 tell me all the things you couldn’t see then,
                                 and I will show you now,

I would have said,

                                 tell me how we continue to miss that which is      
                                 right in front of us
                                 - is it but for a lack of recognition?

treacled words spilling out of cupped palms
running down our wrists  

                                 do you also wonder why we slip
                                 through each other’s fingers?

My Nani had hands like the earth:
coarse and calloused,
warm and stained deep shades
of crimson
from the henna she used for her hair,
like the rich clays of the desert
I called my home.

My Nani had hands like grey-chipped sky:
cracked and weathered,
but capable of shrouding
my smaller ones
in her own.

My Nani used to tell me stories,
about the life she left behind
when she crossed the sea
to be with me.
Every gesture of those familiar hands -
vibrant -
painting over details
that had faded
like old silk saris.

We listened to the rain
together,
as I hid beneath her covers
and waited for the Sonoran sun
to return.

And my Nani would lift my hands,
guide me outside,
water droplets rolling off of our skin
like kisses from heaven.
With her hands, she tore scraps of newspaper,
folding boats with deft movements,
while I set them into the swirling water
that sloshed above our submerged feet.
          Jeevan hai
                             toophaan ke baad.
There is life
after the storm.

She held my hand,
as the thunder bellowed
and the pooling rivers
carried the words from us -
floating stories
that no one would remember
once time bleached them away.

In passing, my brother says he meets
my father’s eyes
in the mirror every morning.
Asks me how you wake up from the kind of dream
where you’ve become the nightmare.
I don’t tell him I don’t know,
nor do I tell him what I do know -
that my face has become a collage
of our mother’s fear
and our father’s desperation,
his mother’s shame
and his father’s rage.
I see it in me.
I see it in the brother in my memories,
who sleeps in my bed with tears running fresh grooves
in his canvas cheeks,
clutching a pillow to his stomach as he snores
in soft, shallow whispers.

I will not join him.

Instead,
I spend the lifetimes of our childhood
perched in the dark at the top of the stairs
when the screaming becomes a weak echo.
My mother’s spine bends like a tree in a hurricane,
and in the dim light,
she shakes with sobs I can’t hear,
pulling glass from her feet.

I am told my father is a good man,
and so I say nothing,
not even when my mother flees in the
sweet violet hours of in-between,
taking the last of herself in the suitcase
she pulls behind her through the door.
For a month, she is gone.
Conjuring hope from air,
I transform into a magician,
weaving an illusion that
we are strong enough
to stand without her.
When she is gone,
I am also the skeptic,
searching anxiously for the trick
in her vanishing act.

The woman who returns to us
is a changeling with my mother’s hair and voice.
She is never quite the same -
the nesting doll with nothing left to give,
turning herself inside out looking
for lost selves
and past love.

And for the first time,
I stop praying to a god who chooses
not to hear me.

If there is a hell in this life,
then mine is in all the nights
I spent curled up on the bathroom floor
while my father became Kronos.
Ripped the laughter from my mother’s throat
and swallowed it,
only in this version,
there is no triumphant vengeance -
no reclaiming the parts of us that were
devoured so meaninglessly.

As I grow older,
I become a mockingbird girl,
defacing small kindnesses
with crude,
awkward mimicry
of what I know I ought to be.
I stumble over teeth and lips and open hands,
until I have learned to stay suspended
in the pain I’ve inherited.

When I am 18,
mother cries as we celebrate my birthday.
It is wordless - this understanding.
We both know that life is precious.
And fragile.
And fleeting.
And yet,
we would rather be matchstick women
burning bright and quickly.
Gone without ceremony.
Without lingering.

Breathing is the only anchor we know.
Our lungs are bound together
by these ribbons of history,
and they suffocate us equally as much
as they hold us together.
How do you unravel generations of hurt?
The knife is the heirloom they’ve left in my chest,
and I do not know if I will survive
if I pull it out and end this cycle myself.

Whose blood will be on my hands
when I sever these ties?

Love was a nine-year-old girl,
reciting Bible verses in Sunday school.
                          Love is patient, love is kind.
                          It does not envy. It does not boast.
                          It is not proud. It does not dishonor others.
                          It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered.
                          It does not keep a record of wrongs.
And love was that she was foolish enough to believe it.

Love was writing your name in the sand,
sitting on the shore and waiting for the tide to steal it away.
It was counting every painful minute before a sunset
and guessing how you spent them.
The postcards I wished were valentines
from all of our favorite cities.

Love was the brand of your lips on the skin of my wrists,
searing away the parts of me I thought I needed.
Every breath we shared was oxygen,
but someone left matches in my lungs.
In case you’re curious,
I still haven’t managed to put out
the fires you started.

Love was the unspoken words
planted neatly in the punctuated pauses
of the conversations we never had.
Petals of wildflowers I pressed between
chapters of your most treasured books.
The times I sang myself to sleep
to the crinkling of pages,
dog-earing the ones that reminded me of you.
The love letters pinned to the post-it notes
I traded for silence.

Love was placing a candle in the window,
and a white flag on the doorstep.
Leaving the door unlocked
not to let you in,
but to watch you walk away.
Doubling up on waterproof mascara
on the nights I spent thinking of you.
Time is priceless,
tears are not.

It isn’t fair to say you miss the sun,
until you’ve danced a turn in the rain.
No storm warning could have predicted
the way your lightning touch would
paralyze every delicate nerve in my body.
Is there a word to describe the way
thunder rattles the sky?
There should be.
I would have said it then,
when you told me you loved her,
and all I could do was search
for an umbrella.

Love was the flour stains on the clothes I borrowed,
the scent of vanilla lining the holes
I tore in your old sweaters,
the loose ends I wrapped around my fingers.
I started carrying needle and thread
to patch up the places where love wore us through.
Nothing seemed to stop us from unraveling.

Love explained why you caught me
lingering in hallways,
mapping exits signs like landmarks
after you told me to keep my options open.
It was the moments when I sat on the stairs alone,
puzzling over the memories I couldn’t jigsaw piece together.

Loving you ought to have made me better,
but promises notwithstanding,
you made me worse.
Because love is bitter.
She is neither patient, nor kind.
Love is ruthless and desperate.
Love is selfish, jealous,
and will delight in how pushing you away
made her feel stronger.
Love is too indignant to admit
how much she misses the sound
of your voice.
And though she claims she is proud,
love can hardly bear to face her reflection
when you are not around to tell her
she is beautiful.

Love is never satisfied.
Love tries to pretend that she is.

Believe me when I say
I wasn’t always like this.
Because once,
there was a nine-year-old girl
who used to recite Bible verses during Sunday school
and imagine what love would be like.

did you love him
before they came to you?
when they asked you
what it would take
to put your lover in the ground?

did it rip you apart
to deceive him?
the first,
the second,
the third time
he lied to you?
the final time
you lied to him?

delilah,
did he love you?
or had he kissed
too many women
to remember what
your name tasted like
on his lips?

perhaps,
you loved each other once.
perhaps,
the night you held the blade
to his hair,
you ran your fingers through it
one last time.
pressed kisses to the lids of eyes
that would be gouged out,
tears marking a path
on the wrists
that would be shackled.

they don't tell your story
like that.
was it hard, delilah?
choosing your people
over your lover?
knowing that he
would make the same choice?
realizing that maybe
love was equal parts merciless
and hopeless?

delilah,
were you not,
in the end,
a prisoner too?

the girl at the table next to mine
lets the wolf across from her
feed her platitudes
leans forward
spine bending in a placating arch
when he tells her there is art in her tragedy
how could she not know beauty is pain
when it is the hunger that drives her
starving for pretty words
that will not fill the cavities in her chest
still she will devour them
with a desperation even the wolf
has not tasted before
folding them up for safekeeping
to take up the space
she will not allow herself to occupy
so that when she finally climbs
into the wolf’s mouth
pulls the jaws closed over her head
he will not know
that he has swallowed
a crossword corpse
a creature of syllabic bones
strung together by a vacant
brittle
once-was

If attitude is contagious,
then why am I the only one
whose sick?

She loved him like a prayer -
quiet,
distant,
hopeful -
fingers interlaced with uncertainty,
when she should have
shouted his name
like a battle cry,
fighting to hold on.

I ought to have walked away then,
when he said he could fix me.
But I had never sampled sugar before,
and though his lies were bittersweet,
they made the truth easier to swallow.
Now, I am rotting
because of those honeyed words,
and his kisses have begun to taste
like cough syrup.

too kind for that
too good

kind
                                    like these eyes do not weep
                                    if you shut your own
                                    like tears do not stain the ground
                                    red
                                    when you’re on your knees in Gethsemane

                                    like kindness is no substitute for

good
                                   is no substitute for bones
                                   is no substitute for marrow
                                   is no substitute for blood
                                   is no substitute for breath

cannot stop a heart from
stopping                                    as if we have any control
cannot iron out a spine
that has memorized
what a caving ceiling looks like

                                                   don’t be sorry
                                                   it’s only natural now.

If only you knew
how many words
I’ve masked behind
painted smiles.

How many times
I’ve let you walk away,
forced you to walk away.

Yes, I’ve heard
it’s better to build bridges,
but I think I’ve started to
revel in the beauty
of burning them down.

It terrifies me
that one day
I might watch you
go up in flames.

You don’t understand.
Darling, there are
ashes behind these eyes,
sparklers in this chest,
gun power in these veins.

But don’t go looking
for fireworks
where you won’t
find them.

My kind of love
isn’t what you’re
searching for.

My kind of love
will set you ablaze.
Devour you.
Leave you with nothing
but scorched palms
and a blackened heart.

My kind of love
is never satisfied.

And I will leave you intoxicated.
Suffocated.
Collateral damage.

So you’ve heard
I’m a tad volatile.
Good.
It’s about time you learned
to keep your distance
from fire hazards.

You were Icarus.
I was the Sun,
and you flew too close.
Everybody knows
that you lost your freedom
the moment you lost your wings,
But no one ever talks about
what it’s like
to lose the passion
that fueled your fire.

When I Ask:

Have you ever sung to birds in cages?

I Mean:

When will you learn to stop leaving breadcrumbs for the dead? When will you learn that they cannot follow you up from the grave, even if they wished to?

When I Ask:

When was the last time you felt remorse for a flower you plucked?

I Mean:

How many faces have you traded for daffodils and irises? Who taught you how to mime guillotines with empty gestures and soigné decorum, to become familiar with severing beauty from imperfection when you trample flower heads underfoot?

When I Ask:

Why do we light matches when roman candles burn brighter?

I Mean:

What about transience is so remarkable that we would trade eternity for the temporary? Why do we torture ourselves with legacies preserved in syntax and syllables, as if we could ever capture our photograph history in a single moment, in a single word?

When I Ask:

Have you ever torn out your tongue and salted it, so you can swallow it without choking?

I Mean:

What does regret taste like on the nights when the pillow is too warm, the sheets too cold? Who leaves the glass of water by the bedside when you’re feverish? Do you rehearse excuses to make conversation palatable?

When I Ask:

Do you leave the door unlocked intentionally, or just to provoke me?

I Mean:

Where did we begin pocketing pain like pebbles? Where were we when we first realized that skipping stones does not mean hurling them for target practice, when seas and crowds were at once interchangeable in sentences? Where will you be standing in the room when I present to you the mound I built of my apologies, when I show you that casting stones is not the only way to make our burdens lighter?

When I Ask:

How many different postcard stamps can you describe without closing your eyes?

I Mean:

Will you roll down the hill and lay beside me in the grass next summer like we used to do, before anger became the only language we were confident enough to articulate? Will you uproot every bitter misunderstanding and plant daffodils and irises there for us instead? Will a castle arise from your pebbles, a kingdom from my promises?

If a person could be glass,
then she was porcelain.
You kissed her china lips
as if she would shatter -
at any moment.
You did not think your big hands
were fit to envelop her smooth curves,
but you held them anyway,
all too aware that chipped pieces
have edges of their own.
Love runs deep, but so does blood,
and even I know what it is like to be cut.

Years later,
when all is said and done,
you will twist in your bed,
drowning in empty covers searching
for a warmth you can’t remember
and a name you’ve long since forgotten.
You will wake up early to chase the dawn,
crawl through the narrow window
and scale rooftops,
perched on the tiles soaking up the sunrise.
Like she used to do.
Like you used to watch her do.

              I see the sun and the sun sees me.
             The sun sees the somebody I can’t see.

And you will love her for it.
But you will also miss her for it.

              God bless the sun and God bless me.
              God bless the somebody I can’t see.

When you wash your face at night,
you will stare at hollow eyes in a mirror,
looking for an imprint, a trace, a memory -
anything -
that could bring you back.
That could bring her back.

                If I get there before you do,
                I’ll tear a hole and pull you through.

But you will not find her breadcrumb trail there.
Instead,
you will find it in the plaster.
Under the sink.
Behind the curtains.
Promises etched in the wallpaper
she loved to hate so much.

I know you still listen to her favorite song.
You say you don’t know the words anymore,
it hurts too much to remember.
Apologies do not sound the same as melodies, my dear.
But you’ll sing it a thousand times over,
mouthing I love you’s
to fill the spaces she left behind.

A million miles away,
she is in some man’s display case,
on some man’s shelf,
in some man’s arms collecting dust.
She has put herself together again.

         And I’ll write your name on every star,
         that way the world won’t seem so far.

But sometimes,
she hums the tune, too.
A broken record stuck on the lyrics -
not lyrics -
she meant to echo back long ago:

I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.

"Unconditional" means something now.

We look in every burrow, around every corner,
stalk down every alleyway for it.
We empty out our closets,
expose our skeletons, eaten away by our demons.
Don’t tell the preacher,
but I know all of my own creatures by name.
I can introduce you to them, if you’d like.
Oh, and they can be so persuasive, too.
They’d love to meet you. A pleasure, truly.
But be careful, they’ll tell you it’s okay.
One step, two steps, sidling closer,
Closer,
come a little closer.
Don’t be afraid.
It’s only the sky, reach out and touch it.
Taste the sun and stroke the clouds.
You’ve been searching,
waiting all your life for this moment to arrive.
See the birds, aren’t they beautiful?
You can be too.
Take another step, imagine you have wings.
Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid-
Don’t you know falling is a part of flying?
And you’ll listen,
it’s the sweetest of music, trust me.
I would know.
Savor the bliss while you can, my darling.
You’ve jumped off the edge.
I’ve done the same.
And my demons,
they told me it was a leap of faith.

An answer to no particular question:
And I fall apart.

Loneliness isn't the feeling
of being empty.

It is the ache
that follows
when you try to fill
a broken vessel.

The numbness
of watching yourself
seep through the cracks,
reaching for something
that's long since
slipped away.

**** it all -
Where is justice?

Why are we only greeted
with violence?

Why are our voices only met
with silence?

some days I am more storyteller than poet / more argus than storyteller / what good are eyes if the path is always changing / can you still find home if you’ve never seen it / can you still find home if you’ve seen it a thousand times / what then is the significance / truth should still feel the same / I’ve been told / even if it is said in different words / the essence is incorruptible / substance-attribute / reduced to its simplest form and you’ll still recognize the elements / still recognize the sentiment / but I ask you / if you dissect a song / will it bleed the lyrics or the melody / when I am next to you in the passenger seat / whose name becomes your lyrics and whose name becomes mine / does it matter if the song leaves our lips in the same key / some days I am more melody than eyes / more loose pages than melody / a constant / an incessant / what should I be looking for / true or false / be patient / do you understand what I am trying to show you in patchwork myth / in these stories which might never bear any semblance / to the kind of truth you’ve been watching the skies for / listen / when you cannot / look / the question and the answer / are not / mutually exclusive / there is a bit of the corporeal in every fiction.

1) leave,
                                                   if you don’t feel it.
                                                  But I can’t tell you to
2) go.
                                                   So instead,
                                                  I keep on loving you,
3) knowing that you will
                                                   find the door
4) on your own.

I met the lover
you replaced me with
at our favorite cafe.
do you remember it?
the one where you claimed
I was your only?

Did you know
she takes her coffee
with sugar,
heavy on the cream?
Just like you.
It seems you were
made for each other.

She's lovely enough,
I suppose.
If you like that sort of thing.
A beautiful, surprised laugh,
especially when I told her
I prefer my coffee black.
I didn't tell her that
the bitterness tastes like
my memories of you.

it was pouring this morning in phoenix,
but I am not thinking about desert winters.
instead, I am thinking of chocolate eyes,
silver-lining on evening storm clouds that cross the horizon
like restless wolves,
friendship bracelets I've collected through the years,
broken promises,
whether a kiss from the golden-haired boy
would taste like strawberries
if I could ever learn to love him,
and how it is that january skies could be so similar
to chilly march mornings in cambridge.
mostly,
I am thinking about how change
might be good.

did you know
that every time you recall your favorite memory,
you are rewriting it?
it makes me wonder how long it would take
before those revisions become something
entirely new
and which details we choose to cling to,
memorizing those patchwork pieces
until everything else is forgotten.
it is funny how these very same memories
are our most cherished lies.

perhaps someone is rewriting me right now,
desperately grabbing onto past conversations
and the way the sentences caught in my throat,
as if I were fighting to breathe.
maybe we are both thinking about how change
might be good.

answer me honestly:
do we miss the people that have left us,
or are we just trying to disguise the places
where they made us empty?
in our minds.
in our memories.
are we hoping,
that by remembering,
we will again be able to taste that first moment,
before we rewrote it a hundred different times?
I don't know.
I am searching for the details that escaped me, too.
in an effort to stop them from leaving,
I have forgotten that doing so
still requires a step forward.

yes, change might be good.
that is what I am thinking
as I let the january skies
pass me by.

When will we learn
to lift each other up?

Forget blood -

When will we learn
that the salt of my sweat
and of your tears
tastes the same?

No, I don't write poetry.

I write riots.
I write protests.
I write prayers.
I write progress.

I write the people rising up,
an insurrection turned resurrection.
This is our revival,
our revolution.

It sounds like an anthem,
but it's poetry I'm using.
The voices of the nation
are the song we are choosing.
And the people cry out,
is it hope we are losing?

it is too easy to fall in love with strangers,
too easy to offer my hand
instead of my heart,
because it is the only way I know how to say

                          hello.

the only way I know how to say

                          let me love you gently,
                          because I do not know
                          how to love myself
                          in such a manner.

the only way I know how to say

                         we cannot heal each other,
                         but I will carry your pain for you,
                         even if you do not ask me to.

the only way I know how to say

                         I will stay,
                         even if you send me away.

The only way I know how to say

                        when these words have lost their meaning,
                        will you take my hand, too?

my brother has a Cheshire cat scar
on his ankle,
thin and pale like a waning crescent.
sometimes we tell him that
it's a birthmark from a past life,
or that he got it from getting his foot stuck
in a bear trap
while hunting Bigfoot,
but nobody actually knows how he got it.
only, that's another lie I like to tell.
I know
because I'm the one who gave it to him.

the story I don't tell goes like this:

it is the kind of summer where the cicadas
sound like roaring lions
and you can feel the sweat
trickle down your back so slowly
you imagine there are centipede feet
forming new transit systems
along your spine.
I am seven and my mother still makes me wear
scratchy cotton dresses that I think
I'm too grown up for.
Another lie.
I secretly love them because I can fit my whole hand,
fingers spread apart like starfish arms
in the pocket of the skirt.
we are at the park with my grandmother,
and I am pulling star jasmine
that I plucked from my mother's garden
from the pocket
and stuffing it in the crevices of a rock castle,
cement for our bricks.
I have spent a week building it with my brother
and I am proud.

the brother in question is four
and chases moths in the tall grass,
landing on his face every time
he thinks he's spry enough to catch them.
I'm pretty sure he's mad at me
because I've ruined our castle with my flowers.
actually, no.
he's definitely mad at me,
because when he knocks over our castle
to get my attention,
I run after him
and scream that I'll chase moths with him,
except he's the moth and just doesn't know it yet.
I drive him up the metal slide
that I know he's not skilled enough to climb,
where our grandmother can't see us.
and while he's kicking his way up,
I grab his ankle and I bite him.
hard.
there's a heartbeat of silence and then
firetruck wails so loud I swear the playground
will shatter
so I yank him down and slap my hand
over his mouth.

you bit me, he cries through my grimy palm,
you bit me.
he is shocked, because I am his sister,
and I am supposed to love him.
I am shocked, because I am his sister,
and I do love him,
even though I bit him for knocking down
our castle.
but I am also a coward,
and so instead of apologizing,
I tell him that a huge moth tried to hurt him
and that I bit him so that I could swallow it up
to save him.
when my grandmother comes over,
he has stopped crying but his ankle is still bleeding,
and he begs her not to be angry,
because I did it to keep him safe.
she sends him to the bench,
and when we are alone,
she warns me in her sandpaper tongue
that if I keep telling these stories,
one day he will believe them.

he is sixteen now and we do not talk.
so when he calls me I am so startled that
it feels like I am seven all over again,
my heart racing out of my chest
while I watch him sob.
he says he is calling to talk about the scar
and this time I am preparing myself to explain
that he was branded by a crime lord who tried
to kidnap him as a baby.
but before I can even begin,

he says
I had a dream that I got the scar
because you bit me

the line is suffocatingly quiet
except for my unsteady breathing
as I try to process how it is possible that he could
now of all times
finally remember

he laughs
it's crazy, right?
you would never

and I realize he is waiting for me
to reassure him
so I say
of course not, stupid.
don't you know you got that scar
while wrestling with cobras?
we had to cauterize the wound
to stop the venom from spreading.

I don't need to see his face
to know that he is rolling his eyes,
and he does not need to see mine
to know that I am smiling.

he snorts because these fishtales
never cease to be ridiculous,
and yet,
we both prefer them.

and I'm assuming you saved me
like always?

I think that this might be my first truth in a long time
when I answer:
like always, dummy.
that's a promise.

it heals as much as it hurts,
but prefers watching you bleed
to stitching you up.

I am proud
to be a woman.
But sometimes,
I am ashamed
by the jealousy
I feel knowing that
if I were a man,
they might listen.

misery loves company.
isn't that why you're here?

out of dozens
hundreds
thousands
you chose me
peeled back my skin
exposed me
you must've liked
what you found there
because then
you gutted my heart
greedily
as if you had never
tasted anything
so sweet before
I was not ripe
for the taking
but you took
and took
kept taking
acted surprised
to find me empty
when you're the one
who hollowed me out
objectified me
devoured me

You tell me I’m insane.
You’re right.
It’s my fault,
because I let these wounds fester.
But maybe you are, too.
Because once,
I could’ve sworn
that you liked me better.

the day I tell you I love you
it will be strong,
loud like thunder
rattling your soul.
you will feel it
in every bone
in your body.
you will know it,
greet it
like crickets serenade
the coming storm
with their violin song.
I will spell it for you
in the moonlit sky,
scattering stars
so that the last thing
you see before falling asleep
are constellation promises,
the last thing you taste
are goodnight kisses
lingering on your lips
like the last breaths
of dusk.
but for now,
I will tell you I love you
in the words I do not say,
the questions you do not ask,
and in the clear skies
we take for granted.

There is power
in dashing expectations,
shedding them like a second skin
to be discarded and forgotten.
For someone else to find it.
Try it on.
Suddenly defined by an ill-fitting ideal
they were never meant to fill.

But there is strength
in picking it up
and making something new of it.
Putting it back on,
wearing the truth proudly
when they tell you it doesn't fit.
Doesn't suit you.

When that day comes,
hand them the needle and thread.
Perhaps these expectations
don't suit them either.
Maybe it's time we asked the world
to start living up to ours.

Am I bitter?
Yes.
Remorse doesn't look good
on liars.

As perplexing as it is,
my dear,
life carries on
despite the loss.

Flowers do not suspend
their blooming
simply because they rooted
in a graveyard.

I was looking
for the person
behind the pain
so I let
the mirror
shatter.

I don't have much to offer

only this voice

this heart

these empty hands
always reaching and grasping and hoping

and this moment
this moment is all that will be left of me
when my name no longer
means something to you

there is only this
and there is only us
we are the only ones
who will give so much
and in the end still wonder

was it enough?

god
what I'd pay to keep that smile
for myself

how can you be so cruel
as to pretend not to know
just how much power
you already have over me?

don't ask the impossible
of me
but don't offer me the impossible
either

I have nothing to sacrifice for it yet.

I don't remember it tasting so sweet
the kind of sticky-sweet that makes you lick
your fingers
so the taste won't be as fleeting
as the memory
dancing waltzes
across your tongue

it's addictive but perhaps only
for me
because I swear I'm the only one
made out of sugar
crystalline
and with the slightest
word
slightest
touch
slightest
provocation
I would crumble so silently
so effortlessly for you

it has been too long since I've felt this way
a fairy tale for children laced
with summer fever dreams and other
cloyingly untamed fantasies
that should have no place
in my life now

and yet
after everything
I am still here
still ******* my teeth for the last of it
still savoring this feeling
that even time could not dull
the flavor of

after everything
I have not grown sick
of this
though we've both grown sick
of each other

she’s 70 degree miracles
in the dead of a hellish summer
Steve Miller Band’s "The Joker"
with the windows rolled all the way down
glossy strawberry rosebuds
left on the rim of old crystal glasses
and curling up sideways
catlike
in armchairs near windows
where the evening light becomes honey
she’s the pages of "Practical Magic"
we’ve dogeared together
and kite string strands of hazelton hair
loose from a messy french braid
just like now
drifting in front of curious eyes

look,

she’s laughing in the same shade
of fire-lit gold as the aspen
that whisper overhead,

have you ever seen anything so beautiful before?

no,

I answer honestly.

not even once.

I am finding pieces
of you
in places I never
thought to look.

your hair
in the shower drain.

the scent of your cologne
on sweaters I thought I gave away.

your lilting, half-dollar smile
knitted into the faces of so many
strangers passing by
who look nothing like you
but I always stop
always turn
always ask
                                                             ­                 have we met before?
as if it were that simple
to start over.

it makes me laugh now
to think that there was ever
once a time
when I thought I needed
these parts of you
to complete me.

there is a kind of heartache
a name we don't dare speak
but I see it on your face now
in the familiar way
you bite your lip
it is spelled painstakingly
in bloodshot eyes
and salt-streaked cheeks
that before
they were yours
were mine

should I feel honored
by the way you’ve
romanticized
my tragedy?

profited from it

carved out my flaws
with steady resolve

painted over them
as if the brush and scalpel
were one in the same

how long will I bleed
for your entertainment?

divine inspiration does not
make you a god,
my love

you cannot kiss cold lips
and breathe life into them

do not deceive yourself

though they worship you
for your crime,
we both know it is I
who will live and die
a thousand deaths
by your hand

make me your art,
but do not act surprised
when they forget
you've trapped prometheus
in canvas

immortality was never
yours
to begin with