i am strong.
i clutch my ribs on certain nights
because i might split open -
i might even spill.
my fingers stay tight
to keep me stitched.

i am weak.
i seal my tears in a jar,
let it sour and congeal.
i take my success
hard.
i love
unruly

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

and there's something about
turning 16
and filling your lips with
the deepest red
in the mirror

how it feels
like you've become a rose
freshly unfurled from
some skeleton,
your colours as rich and
viscous as your dripping blood

yet a rose that's closed
in a glass jar, you are
turned and admired, you are
twirled in fingers
like the stem of a wineglass

because at 16,
you feel you are something
refined,
mature and flowing and
beautiful

older

but it's only
your mother's lipstick;
she too is getting old.
at night you take
the crimson off,
and the rest of you
comes into focus.
all your yellows, all your blues;
you will need to love them too

and don't you let the laughter
slide off from
your new scarlet mouth
because you're 16 now.
it will try to
and you will need to pick it up
off the floor

because you're 16 now
but remember one thing for me:
you are far more sturdy
than just a rose

you are a girl
you are every colour
you think you haven't become

somewhere
between 4 and 15,
your innocence was lost
in the angles of your cheeks

and the hardness
of your dreaming
wore itself down
like bark on a tree

now you're standing on an edge
looking over at the sea,
with softer hips and aeroplane feelings;
you know
that you are leaving

somewhere
after 4 and 15,
you learned to be gentle,
to hold yourself
more carefully

you were
a flightless bird.
you are
a girl, becoming
woman, turning
over her dreams
like tea leaves.

you know
that you are leaving
somewhere
behind.

you filter every pixel pore
you angle yourself thin

my darling, which
do you love more?

the ******* the screen
or the girl in your skin?

if you took
the edge out of a storm,
you'd be left with a blank film;
no soundtrack of droplets,
no lightning
cracks of conflict,
no romance, from
air steeped in rain.

so if
you wiped away your childhood
scar, laced your
back up straight,
turned the volume **** on your opinions
and cried a little less -
what
would you be then?

if you softened all your angles
would you tell your story well?

tea
for the unfinished assignments
for the time of the month
for the boy who douses you with salt
for trying to feel loved

wine
for your tired eyes
for your loneliness, a butterfly
beating its wings on your ribs,
for trying to grasp
what freedom is.

my darling,
don't you love to heal?
don't you love to escape?