The skin I thought I once knew
As only looking just straight at you
And then all those other voices I kept down so long
Finally made it out so big and strong.

The reason why I may have blushed
And now I can feel my hetero hopes crushed
Cause that little boy kicking defiantly inside
And he's for SURE got different plans in mind.

No, no, it's a one time thing
This doesn't mean I want a separate fling
But I can't help but think
Of all those times I wanted to wink

And now I feel myself splitting in two
One's for that, the other for you
But I'll keep that side on the down-low
Because I've still got a lot of thinking to do, you know.

I have locked myself inside of my car in the middle of the school parking lot.
I can still hear the ringing of the bell that caused us to scatter out of the school like ants escaping from a disrupted colony ringing in my ears. I am no longer a fire ant, but a caged animal, and I’m not sure who the metal barrier around me is supposed to be protecting. I still don’t feel safe.
I am thinking about how the glass at the zoos muffles the sounds of the animals, and how you might miss their cries unless you stopped walking and got right next to the glass. I don’t want to be seen, but, at the same time, I am hoping and waiting for people to stop walking past me, stand next to my car, and listen.
I am laying down in my back seat like a wounded animal, and my screams are being muffled by me burying my face into the seat. I no longer feel like a caged animal, but a fish inside of a tank. I don’t know how long I have been crying, but I feel like I am drowning. You can’t hear noises in the water unless you are below the surface yourself. I feel like I am the exhibit in the aquarium that everyone ignores because whatever’s in the water is hiding under a rock.
My head feels as though it will explode, I can’t breathe, everything is blurry, my chest hurts, I can’t stop crying, and I have convinced myself that I am dying. When my cousin was three, he would have died if my dad had not performed cpr on his blue, limp little body after he was pulled out of the pool. Now, he is eleven, and he knows how to swim, but I don’t have the heart to tell him that you don’t need water to drown.
Now, I am wishing that I had been the one that drowned that day.
I am sitting in a fish tank, I have no gills and I can not breathe.
My screams are silent, nobody can hear me, and I am kicking the inside of the car to try and make some noise, but everyone has gone home by now.
I am able to breathe again and I have grown a pair of lungs.
I am sitting in a zoo after closing hours, and all I can do is practice my roar and try to be heard again in the morning.

Each and every page that goes by
Out of the corner of my youthful eye
I can see each and every passing thought
I expected fate should have bought.

With tears tumbling down each cheek
Them bright happy faces are so sought to seek
Did those eyes seven months ago know of today?
Did they know his mind would ever be okay?

And with trembling fingers, I can scarcely believe
That memory misplaced in my web of weaves
I used to be able to say that I had HER heart
Now I lay on the floor waiting for the inevitable depart.
For every smile I see knows not of what we now do
And we've changed from the years that changed even you
So should I still be in love with the girl that flipped me upside down?
And risk all those months again wearing that same darkened frown?

Because each and every photo from yesterday
Lacks what is present here right now
And if I ever could relive any of my years
I would still experience the same fears.

I sit here.
I fall prey to your charms, harms and weaknesses.
I see you in my mind with glasses, Onassis.
Your brother flying across the Atlantic
And you are Atlas holding the world up.
I feel the old pang.
I fall prey- that’s me, Persephone.
I’ve had my time in Tartarus
And you were my Spring. My Astonishing Adonis,
Sunglasses, Onassis. All second chances.
The night I met a Greek hero disguised as a man
Who turned out to be a man disguised as a Greek hero.
And I miss you, as you go off.
I’m not Persephone, I’m Penelope.
I was unsure I’d wait for you
And now I don’t want to.
But still, part of me does.
Everyone is like a Greek god in some ways.
I’ve had my fun with Apollo and Hades and Zeus-
Who I’m still holding out for. But aren’t we all?
And you, born on the same day as my Pallas.
My palace in the future, my ramshackled past.
You know a surface, you weren’t meant to stay in my world.
And I prayed and prayed to let you stay.
But as always it was up in the air.
So I sit there.
I fall prey to your harms, charms and weaknesses.
Mine is weak ankles, yours is your weak spine.
And I wonder,
Did love ever make you blind?

floating on
the pond
dragonflies zip
above me
thinking I
am an
organic substance
an algae-dipped
                nympth
my hair in fronds
the subtle ripple
of sunstreak
on thigh
like reflections of
rainbow lanterns
upon skin
my skin, puckered
from melding
aquatic escapade
is soothed in this home
of kissing koi
who welcome me
in fin brushes
bubbles on the
small
of my back
sweet as the
lush harmony
of waterlily voices
that only I can hear
as the gaze of frogs
and forest dwellers
imprints upon
the inner lids
of my
      starlit
eyes

recurrent moonlit distractions
captured by words
tied down into morsels;
separated and concealed,
contiguous yet sheer greetings
of each other’s skin
had left wanton burns
and gushing streams
of a brooding lover’s propensity
for unsusceptible matters of the heart.

there, he stood,
on the precipice of tomorrows;
ruminating and scrupulous,
forlorn yet never dithering
over mundane and quintessential quandaries
of the tepid gloss of incertitude
dangling off syllables
dictated by sordid agony.

there, he stood,
in the midst of everything;
from the otiose adoration
poured out of empty caskets
to the lenitive shades of his eyes.

with the ripples of moonlight,
the gestalt of doleful flower-like hearts,
there, she stood,
and waited.