Canto I. Long ago and far away...

Under the bridge across the Kankakee River, Grampa found me. I was busted for truancy. First grade. 1946.

Summer and after school: Paper route, neighborhood yard work, dogsbody in a drugstore, measuring houses for the county, fireman EJ&E railroad, janitor and bottling line Pabst Brewery Peoria. 1952-1962.

Fresh caught Mississippi River catfish. Muddy Yummy. Burlington, Iowa. 1959. Best ever.

In college, Fr. ***** usually confused me with my roommate, Al. Except for grades. St. Procopius College, 1958-62. Rats.

Coming home from college for Christmas. Oops, my family moved a few streets over and forgot to tell me. Peoria, 1961.

The Pabst Brewery lunchroom in Peoria, a little after dawn, my first day. A guy came in and said: "Who wants my horsecock sandwich? ****, this first beer tastes good." We never knew how many he drank. 1962.

At grad school, when we moved into the basement with the octopus furnace, Dave, my roommate, contributed a case of Chef Boyardee spaghettios and I brought 3 cases of beer, PBRs.  Supper for a month. Ames. 1962.

Sharon and I were making out in the afternoon, clothes a jumble. Walter Cronkite said, " President Kennedy has been shot…”. Ames, 1963.

I stood in line, in my shorts, waiting for the clap-check. The corporal shouted:  "All right, you *******, Uncle and the Republic of Viet Nam want your sorry *****. Drop 'em".  Des Moines. Deferred, 1964.

Married and living in student housing. Packing crate furniture. Pammel Court, 1966.

One of many undistinguished PhD theses on theoretical physics. Ames. 1967.

He electrified the room. Every woman in the room, regardless of age, wanted him, or seemed to. The atmosphere was primeval and dripping with desire. In the presence of greatness. Palo Alto, 1968.

US science jobs dried up. From a mountain-top, beery conversation, I got a research job in Germany. Boulder, 1968. Aachen, 1969.

The first time I saw automatic weapons at an airport. Geneva, 1970.

I toasted Rembrandt with sparkling wine at the Rijksmuseum. He said nothing. Amsterdam International Conference on Elementary Particles. 1971.

A little drunk, but sobering fast: the guard had Khrushchev teeth.
Midnight, alone, locked in a room at the border.
Hours later, release. East Berlin, 1973. Harrassment.

She said, "You know it's remarkable that we're not having an affair." No, it wasn't. George's wife.  Germany, 1973.

"Maybe there really are quarks, but if so, we'll never see them." Truer than I knew.  Exit to Huntsville, 1974.

On my first day at work, my first federal felony. As a joke, I impersonated an FBI agent. What the hell? Huntsville. 1974. Guess what?-- No witnesses left! 2021.

Hard work, good times, difficult times. The first years in Huntsville are not fully digested and may stay that way.

The golden Lord Buddha radiated peace with his smile. Pop, pop. Shots in the distance. Bangkok. 1992.

Accomplishment at work, discord at home. Divorce. Huntsville. 1994. I got the dogs.

New beginnings, a fresh start, true love and life-partner. Huntsville. 1995.

Canto II. In the present century...

Should be working on a proposal, but riveted to the TV. The day the towers fell and nearly 4000 people perished. September 11, 2001.

I started painting. Old barns and such. 2004.

We bet on how many dead bodies we would see. None, but lots of flip-flops and a sheep. Secrets of the Yangtze. 2004

I quietly admired a Rembrandt portrait at the Schiphol airport. Ever inscrutable, his painting had presence, even as the bomb dogs sniffed by. Beagles. 2006.

I’ve lost two close friends that I’ve known for 50-odd years. There aren’t many more. Huntsville. 2008 and 2011.

Here's some career advice: On your desk, keep a coffee cup marked, "No Whining", that side out. Third and final retirement. 2015.

I occasionally kick myself for not staying with physics—I’m jealous of friends that did. I moved on, but stayed interested. Continuing.

I’m eighty years old and walk like a duck. 2021.

Letter: "Your insurance has lapsed but for $60,000, it can be reinstated provided you are alive when we receive the premium." Life at 81. Huntsville, 2022.

Canto III: Coda

Honest distortions emerging from the distance of time. The thin comfort of fading memories. Thoughts on poor decisions and worse outcomes. Not often, but every now and then.

(Begun May 2016)

I’m not allergic to bee stings – I never have been, I probably never will be – but I am more afraid of bees than anything else. More afraid than heights, than fire, than opening up to others, than death by drowning. I have been stung more times than I will ever be able to count. My skin has since grown thicker, but I remember when it was soft, and I was small. I used up the entire allowance of pain I was given for life in less than four minutes.
Perhaps I should specify that it’s not bees that I am afraid of, but wasps.
When I was nine years old, much younger than I am now, I stepped on a yellow jacket nest. My bare foot went into the hole and came out covered in their little striped bodies. There was this buzzing noise that at the time I’d thought was normal, but I now know that it was the sound of the wasps that were in my ears. They had been trying to crawl down my ear canals. I wonder if they had mistaken my canals for their burrows, and had been trying to get back to their queen, but were disappointed to find my ear drums, instead.
My sister – the same age – covered in wasps alongside me, screamed and screamed, but I made no noise. By the time I even thought to cry, I had been stung so many times it would have been pointless to weep for my swollen, red toes. I remember being unable to feel the wasps’ venom running through my veins because I couldn’t even feel my veins. If I would have cried for anything, it would have been for fear that, being unable to feel them, I might have lost track of my tiny feet. They could have walked away without my body and I wouldn’t have known. They could have walked to school and back without me.
Of course, my feet could barely walk. After my initial disgust, I watched my sister run away from where we had been standing and I knew that I should run, too. I could still feel the wasps crawling, clamoring, on my skin, in my clothes, in my hair. I remember the feeling of these bees crawling around among the roots of my hair, making themselves well-acquainted with the tender skin of my scalp. I remember being unable to get them all out of my hair before I walked into the house.
I knew that I should run, and so, balanced precariously on my numbed feet, clambered after her.
I followed my screaming sister down to our farmhouse, past my stepmother who was also screaming, even louder than my sister. I don’t remember where my father was that day.
We ran down the dirt road that led from the barns to our house, removing our shirts as we went and stopping to strip down to our underwear on the front porch. I remember the honks from cars as they passed by. I remember not knowing why they were honking, but knowing that I was angry with them for honking, for ogling, rather than stopping to help. I remember not knowing how they would help, just knowing that I needed help, desperately.
The irony of our stings is that my sister, a year later, was cast in our school’s operetta, and ended up playing the part of a yellow jacket, a sort of elementary-school-gangster, part of a group of them, who wore – you guessed it – yellow jackets and stole other bugs’ lunch money. I would say that, if the wasps that attacked me had been human, they would definitely have been after the money I used to buy Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pies in the lunchroom.
If I had been stung even three years later, I would have been big enough to know that one doesn’t run around in untrimmed grass with no shoes on their feet for precisely this reason. If I had been stung three years earlier, I would have been too small, and dead. So I am grateful for even the smallest of coincidences, the tiny droplet of fate that had given me those stings on that day, at that age.


I would like to talk about pain transference. In your body, nerves often run between parts of yourself you never thought would be connected. If something hurts in your elbow, it wouldn’t shock you to find that your fingers hurt as well, but if your elbow hurt and so did your lower spine? You’d be a little confused.
This is pain transference.
It’s a form of generalized pain; you can locate the pain, it’s just not coming from any one place. You can feel the pain in more than one part of your body, though there’s no reason for anything other than your elbow to ache. This is also your body’s way of protecting you from pain. It’s not that this pain is more manageable, but that it is easier to understand. Your elbow might be more hurt than the ache lets on, but you can’t tell, because your lower back is throbbing.
Now imagine your body as a hive of wasps. Imagine each of these wasps as a nerve inside of said hive-body. Imagine the queen as this hive-body’s brain. What is your body’s goal? To protect the brain. What is a hive’s goal? To protect the queen. Each wasp is born with an instinctual dedication to the queen. They must protect this individual at all costs. Your body, on the other hand, does everything it possibly can to protect the part of you that makes you so unbearably you.
Yellow jackets are social creatures. Each wasp has its own purpose in the hive, and the three different ranks within this hierarchy are the queen, the drones, and the workers. The queen (who is the only member of the colony equipped by evolution to survive the winter; every other wasp is dispensable) lays eggs and fertilizes them using stored ***** from the spermatheca. Her only purpose is to reproduce. Occasionally the queen will leave an egg unfertilized, and this egg will develop into a male drone whose only purpose is also reproduction. The female workers are arguably the most important part of the hive. They build and defend the nest.
Only female yellow jackets are capable of stinging, and wasps will only sting if their colony is disturbed. This fact is new and interesting to me. I remember thinking that it would make so much sense if the only wasps in the colony who could sting were the females. Females have a motherly, nurturing nature about them, but they are protective and willing to make sacrifices as well. Lo and behold.
The females are the nerves. They transfer the pain from the queen to themselves (and then, if disturbed, to the third-party individual who has disturbed them).
Psychics view pain transference as the transferring of pain between bodies rather than the transferring of pain between separate parts of the same body, but it works in a very similar way. Different types of energy vibrate at different frequencies; loving energy vibrates at a higher frequency than dark energy, therefore they transfer between people at different rates. Pain is simply dark energy that holds a fatalistic power over us.
According to psychics, energy can be transferred through the mind, the body, and the spirit, but pain is mostly transferred through physical touch. To transfer pain to another human being, you must touch them in a way that is not beneficial to their own or your spiritual growth.


I would like to talk about smallness. I was nine when I was stung by these yellow jackets. I was nine and the first time I’d ever been stung was at a friend’s birthday party at maybe the age of seven, behind the knee, and it’d swelled up so large I couldn’t bend my knee for two days. I knew the dangers of disturbing wasp nests; I’d watched my friends all through elementary school getting stung on the wooden playground on the premises. I, myself, stuck to swing-sets and splinters.
I was always so careful. I never went near trees if I saw a nest in its branches. My teachers had told me that I should stay away from the part of our playground made up of tires, because the hornets liked to nest in the rubber. I was terrified of being stung again after that first time because all the mud in the world didn’t seem to make a difference. The wasp’s venom, even after drying up pile after pile of soft, wet dirt, made my limb stiff and sore. I was always so careful; it seems appropriate that the one time I’d been careless, I’d been stung enough times to make up for all the times I had avoided wasps as if my life had depended on it. Maybe it had.
I was small enough when I was nine. If I had been stung at six, or three, I would have been in a lot more trouble. I would have been in a lot more pain. At nine, my stings required calamine lotion and mud for the venom, and ice baths for the swelling. At six, they might have required a trip to the hospital. At three, they would have been much more alarming, considering I had never been stung by a bee by that age.
I was careless. It was summer and I was old enough to wear denim shorts and I had kicked off my flip flops so I could feel the grass under my feet and I was careless and I was punished for it. Now I watch my cousins and my niece play outside and I have to hold my tongue, remember that I am not responsible, that I cannot prevent their being stung, their stings, no matter how badly I want to.
I would like to talk about fate. I would like to talk about how, if I hadn’t been running barefoot, I wouldn’t have gotten stung so badly. I would like to talk about how if my father had been around to tell me not to run barefoot, at least my feet would have been safe. How, if I hadn’t been too stubborn to listen to my stepmom, too, I probably would have had shoes on. How, regardless of all of these things, I probably would have been stung no matter what.
In a world where people are stung by hornets every day – where people are stung by as many as I was, at once – I would like to say that I know now that this experience is not as unique as I had previously thought it to be. I know more people than I thought I did whose trauma involves insects smaller than their pinky finger but together cover their whole body, and venom. I know people who, when I tell them I was stung by hundreds of yellow jackets at the age of nine, shrug and say nonchalantly, “Hey, me too.”
I would like to talk about smallness, and fate. I would like to talk about not only physical smallness, but the smallness one feels when they are in pain.
Belittled might be the word I am looking for. My pain wasn’t belittled, per se, but my pain belittled me.
My pain made me feel small. My pain made me feel small when I was stripping my clothes off on my front porch, cars racing by on the state highway that ran past my house. When I was running my fingers through my hair under the faucet in my kitchen sink because my sister was older and always got first dibs on the shower. As these wasps that hadn’t suffocated under my hair stung my fingers, too, until they were as swollen as my toes. My pain made me feel small when it made me pity myself.


I would like to talk about standing up for yourself as an act of causing pain.
Honeybees, when they sting, are defending themselves and their queen, but they don’t know that when they sting, it will become lodged underneath the skin of whomever they sting and it will pull them apart and they will die.
I imagine the first time a wasp stings to be a sort of power trip. Female wasps can – and will – sting repeatedly to protect the colony. I also imagine they don’t know that their relative the honeybee dies after it stings, but it must be strange for them, nonetheless.
Have you ever seen a video of a woman protecting herself and those she loves? She’s vicious. She won’t stop until the perpetrator has retreated.
When a woman stands up for herself, though, it’s as if she’s tearing herself in half.
A woman standing up for herself is a dangerous thing, both dangerous for her and for those around her. It is an act of bravery and defiance and saving grace all in one.
A few weeks ago, I overheard someone equate being female with being terminally ill, as if we have no place to go but down. As if we are dying creatures, on our last leg of life, with no will to fight for what we want.
As if the pain of the world is being transferred into us all at once.
I would like to argue that it is the exact opposite. There is nothing more alive and breathing than femaleness.I am inseparable from my femaleness. I am inseparable from the that leaks from me when I think of all of the times I have been harmed But I am not inseparable from the pain that I have caused others. I cannot forget that.


I like to imagine sometimes what my stings would have been like if I had gotten them ten years later, as well. I am much bigger. I am much stronger. I am much more capable of handling pain than my nine-year-old counterpart.
I wish I could have been the one to have to handle that pain. I wish my nine-year-old self had known better than to let her foot fall into a yellow jacket nest. I think it’s unfair that, at such an early age, I had to deal with something so terrifying and painful and traumatic. My extremities were swollen for over a week. I couldn’t write, I could close the zipper on my backpack, I couldn’t turn the pages of a book. I couldn’t go to school, and I couldn’t read in bed, so it might be enough to say that the week I was kept out of school to elevate my legs and let the swelling go down was the most boring week of my entire life.
Sometimes I look at my ankles, swollen from blood flow, from standing too long or from sitting too long or from doing anything except elevating them, and I’m reminded of this time when my ankles were much thinner and I watched them on the end of the couch, my toes pointing toward the ceiling. I remember how terrified my mom was. I imagine that phone call must have been harrowing for her – Hi, Michelle, Em’s been hurt. No, she’s fine. Just a few bee stings is all. – and for her to see me for the first time, red and splotchy and itching myself like mad must have been even more so.
I think about my father’s reaction, how I hadn’t been around to see it, but how he must have been heartbroken at knowing he wasn’t there to protect me, to prevent the bees from attacking me. I believe, however, that there was no protecting me, that there was no preventing these wasps from defending their home against me, an infiltrator. I had stepped inside of their burrow and was instantly seen as a threat. Anything I see as a threat to myself, I instantly want to rid myself of.
This is the way of the world: we see something, we determine it to be good or bad, and we either bring it into our lives or defend ourselves from it depending upon which it turns out to be. I happened to be the ultimate evil in these wasps’ lives. They were simply protecting their queen, without whom their hive would no longer exist. I was dark energy, vibrating in a way that spoke to them as threatening. I was transferring pain to them when my foot stepped into the hole, and they were transferring it back to me when they stung me. I transferred energy into the ground as my feet thumped against it. Water transferred energy into me as it helped me rinse wasps out of my hair.
From pain to protection to pity, back to pain. From bee stings to womanhood to sadness and back again. One shouldn’t be afraid to introduce the things they’ve lost to the things they’ve loved, or the things they love to the things they’re afraid of. And I am afraid of wasps. Petrified, even. The other day, driving in my car, I rolled the window down and in, immediately, flew a yellow jacket. I watched as it she flew past me and then around the back of my head. I heard her and was immediately transported back in time. I wondered what she was doing in my car, so far from her queen. I wondered what was in my car that she possibly could have wanted. But I knew that she wasn’t there to hurt me, because I hadn’t invaded her home. I hadn’t made an attack on her queen. I knew there was no sense in panicking, so I didn’t. I didn’t panic.
I am afraid of things even though they won’t **** me, but I have watched myself face these fears. I have stumbled onto a Ferris wheel and then walked confidently off. I have left candles lit without standing to check on them after every episode of The Office I watch. I have loved people I never thought I would, and I have seen the other side.

A crowd emerged
From classes upstairs
After washing their hands
They all sits here

In this room, biggest in the school
Where air is filled with, joyous molecules.
Oh, we had waited, for hours four
To step inside, the lunchroom's door

We all, me and my friends
Find ourselves on a bench
Our food in front of us
We join our hand.

A voice coming from mic
Sing a 'before meal rhyme'
Then start gossiping, this and that,
Enjoying the food, so good, we ate.

"Did you see the match, yesterday?"
"Me and my ma, are going to market on Sunday."
And we talk on every matter, that belongs to us
From a fantastic toy to every movie characters.

As soon as, we finished our meal,
Our lunch box, get sealed
And out of room,
We go in our classroom
But before we washed our hands,
As you all did after your meal

May be, it looks a little messy for you
But who cares?
Food and laugh, we all shares
In our, called with love, a lunchroom.

The kid whose mom always prefaced his introduction with "he's a little shy". He wasn't shy, he was careful, careful from an early age to speak only the most particular of words after seeing how it was a careless choice of words that tore his parents apart. This was the kid who could hear his father yelling and his mother crying but lacked the courage to leave his post at the bottom of the stairs and give his mom a hug. He knew that was all she really needed.

He knew from an early age all he required for a sound nights sleep was a hug and kiss from his dad. This is the kid who would stay up, wordless, into the night wondering if he was safe. As the evening waned and the hours passed he'd never think that his dad forgot. Daddy never forgets. It became his mantra and as he fell into a deep meditative state he would have the same dream as he ever had on those hug less nights. Waking up the next morning he could always recall that warm blanket of a hug because after all, daddy never forgets..

Be the kid who held his hand over his heart during the morning pledge but never volunteered to say it over the speakers because he hated the sound of his own voice. His teacher would bring it up at parent teacher night but his mom always stood up for him "he's just shy". Upon returning home they would ask how his day was and he would smile, shrug, and fall into them, simply awaiting that embrace.

Be the kid who, when his parents finally divorced, never asked them what happened. He never asked them because what if his words had the same effect? Words were lava and if you fell into them you would die. So instead you choose life. On walks home from school, hopping from stone to stone, you never squished an ant or trashed a nest, you cried for the first time when your dog died because nothing ever loved you like he did. He never said a word yet he understood you better than anyone ever did and the thought of coming home and not seeing him basking in the sunlight under his favorite spot in the living room made you bawl.

That night you would have a dream about heaven, place where you could visit in your sleep, a place where upon opening ones mouth sunbeams burst forth hot enough to bask in but never enough to burn.

Be the kid whose most anxious night was spent at that first middle school dance. Boys and girls dancing and the compulsion within him to do the same was palpable. Sure he could have danced alone but He didn't want to dance alone. He wanted to dance with that little girl sitting down by the Coke machine. The one with the frilly dress down to her knees, red band in her hair, and bangs that begged the question "where do i get me one of those. You should be this kid because he actually paid attention when his parents were watching their old movies. You would walk up to that girl and without a word look down into her eyes and for a moment forget why it is that you walked over, but when you finally came too you'd remember that scene from that old black and white movie and put your hand out just like Humphrey bugarr did - at least you think that was his name.

Be this kid because while everyone else was awkwardly moving and swaying like branches in the wind you knew how to hold someone. You knew how to have a conversation without words and this night you two were writing novels. What song was playing? No clue, she'll get mad at you one day for not remembering and you'll be surprised when it was something as stupid as 'I want it that way'.

This is the kid whose favorite nights were spent in her car after driving you home. This is the same kid who when she told him she loved him all he could think was "how can I see you so well when the porch light isn't even on?” She says again, hey - you silly goose, did you hear me? I said I love you. Be this kid because you weren't stupid like everyone else and said "I think I love you too". You grabbed her face and kissed her and for that moment both your worlds stood still. Stagnant in that pregnant pause, just before you broke, you’d catch her gaze and simply smile, warm as heaven.

Be this kid because you would never have a problem with people not liking you. You were far too observant to fall into that trap. Everyone hated the bullies and just called them jerks. The class clown was entertaining but everyone said he was dumb. The girls in the lunchroom seemed never to have anything nice to say about Jennifer and Lindsey and you couldn't even finish your lunch because you just wanted to slam your hands on the table and yell "no Sam, he doesn't like you. Maybe you should actually let him talk instead of complaining about how you don't like his friends. Next time you see him don't beg him for his jacket because, ****, it’s really cold at the skating rink in December. He told you he was taking you to the rinks, why didn't you bring your own **** jacket?

But you would never actually say that, because people would label you judgmental. Rather, remain in peace as the quiet kid because no one could ever put a label on you with any certainty. Sure they could say you were mean, more likely they would say you're weird, but you had loyal friends. Friends who upon hearing that would ask "Really? He's weird? Why is he weird hmm?” Their rebuttal was always "I mean...I dunno, he just really weird, I guess". You would never give them an actual reason to hate you. The meanest things they could ever say about you would be opinion. Opinions are like really *******. Full and generally well rounded, but in the end it was the real stuff you were after.

Be the quiet kid because your silence would show strength. When she breaks up with you through oceans and sands miles away over the phone you won't say a word. She won't be able to see the look of devastation in your eyes and she'll feel terrible for doing it. She would tell her friends that you were so strong. "He didn't yell he, he didn't argue, he didn't ask me if there was another guy, he didn't even cry". Yeah. You cried. But she would never know how much.

Be the quiet kid who always meets someone else. The quiet kid who will draw in strangers because they can feel his energy, they're figuratively and literally moved by it. They sit down next to you across the bench and introduce themselves with a perfectly innocent "whatcha reading?” Which you think is a dumb question because the words “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” were clearly printed in large yellow text on both the front and back covers. Simple trivialities.

Be the quiet kid because the quiet kid will become a quiet man, a quiet man who people could always turn to as their rock. You are stable, you are certain, and you always display your emotions because how else would you speak?

Be the quiet kid because the quiet man will have quiet children, and their children will be quiet and the children after them will be quiet too. Be the quiet kid because you and all your quiet children will never forget to give your kids their goodnight hug.

Miss Elliot is not just a single mom

Miss Elliot is not just white trash

Because Miss Elliot must stay calm

In the lunchroom, though she grins wide, she’ll crash


In the West End High lunchroom peak hour

Miss Elliot, our warrior stands strong

"You ugly white trash," they scream at the door

But she keeps quiet, she won't yell you're wrong


At home, she has a little one to watch

She packs her bag, cleans off her recipe

She claws in her mind for hope hard to catch

As she quietly gives us a whisper



"So what will it be

Chris, Molly, Rudy?"

There’s this beautiful girl at my school
And she smokes a pack a week

And she’s pregnant


She’s got beautiful eyes and that’s all I can see
Her baby will have beautiful eyes too.

And she moans out loud in the lunchroom, “man, I’m going to be so fat in a few months.”


And I swear to god that whenever I see her,
I want to lift up her shirt
and press my cheek against the life beating inside her
and hope that it soaks into my pores
So I can feel something as real as that.

But when I have a baby girl someday
I will love her
Like I love the taste of a grapefruit on hot summer days
I will love her like every ****** I have ever had
I will love her like every prayer I have ever whispered in my car
I will love her like how I miss my dad sometimes

And my baby girl will know that I love her because when I put her on one of those horses on the carousel, I will kiss her hand every time she comes back around to me
and I’ll miss her every second she’s away

And I’m going to teach her so much more than her daddy ever could.



My baby girl’s gonna learn that everybody’s going to die someday
So she should try to meet everyone as soon as possible.

And I’m gonna make sure she never has *** with a person she doesn’t love
But I’m gonna make sure she falls in love every day.


I’ll teach my baby girl to love the way I’ll love her
and then

I’ll love her more every day
until I die or
until I forget whose hands are attached to my wrists.
But I'm sure I’ll remember
when she holds them.

You’re beautiful.
Every single piece of you is absolutely beautiful and I say absolutely knowing that you can trust me because i've seen it all.
And in all of the complicated beauty that you possess I see that you're hurting and that you’re lonely its almost as if I can feel you're sadness, but know that I love you no matter how many miles apart we may be.
785 miles to be exact but regardless of how far away you actually are I still feel like you’re just a few miles down the road I feel as if you still live in the same home the one where we spent countless nights camped out on your trampoline tracing the stars in the sky that would one day lead us here. I get the urge to drive by sometimes you know just to see what its like and who lives there and what’s inside because that house is where I used to spend all of my time growing up.
We used to curl up in your bed late at night talking about things that now seem so insignificant, but back then meant the absolute world to us. And I wonder if some other little girl is living in that room that we found so comforting.
But more than that house more than anything else, I miss you. I miss your presence I miss being able to call you up and knowing that you’d be here in seconds I miss the innocence that we used to have. Back when we'd have to spin bottles in the basement in order for us to kiss boys and sneaking out of the back stairs and trying out best not to make any noise and of course we did because we laughed for hours and didn’t know how to stop it, wed walk to the 24 hour 711 down the street and for us, it was like walking to the moon.
Those moments lasted forever and together we, were unstoppable. And I get choked up when I think about what could’ve been possible before we both went down the wrong paths, going down further and further with no intention of ever going back and we got stuck in quicksand somewhere at the bottom and still through it all you never once let go of my hand. And people can say that our friendship relied on all the things that kept us going but I know the only thing that really kept me going was you.
I remember when things started to get rocky, when we were both walking on a thin rope so close to falling off into a pool of nothing But we never did.
Because you had to pick up and leave everything that you thought you’d always need and start all over in a new town where nobody knew your name and knowing I had to finish high school with my only friend 785 miles away and it still makes me ache just thinking about it. Because I cant walk into the lunchroom knowing that I have someone to sit with anymore, because I know you wont be waiting outside my door with the keys to your Subaru ready to go on our next adventure. And even though we talk everyday I can hear the loneliness in your voice and I can hear the pain and I do my best to hide mine so that you’ll think that i'm okay but deep inside I think you know how much I miss you.
Because I love you more than any guy ever will and you could let me down a million times and id still be there because you were there for me. And so I see the beauty in you and I want you to know that if you or anyone else cant see it, its there. And that no matter what happens in our lives, I will always be here. Because I gave some of the hardest years of my life to you and you gave me yours and for you to be happy, is all I could ever ask for.

Oh, I am raw.

You knew.
You knew this whole time.
And you made your bid for love and freedom oncemore,
Like you'd never been hurt in your life,
Like it couldn't turn out wrong.
You knew, you knew.
Every single time, the hope wins over the sense,
And it's like you don't even try.
Who are you to march away and leave me here,
Heart?
Who are you to skip away blithely into the night every time I beg you to stay?
It's like you don't even belong in my breast,
The way you leap forth and hitch a ride
With people you see pass near, who shine like stars.
You follow them like gravity,
And every time, I scream inside my head,
Locked in,
"WAIT! Don't go, don't leave me here to feel your space!"
But you ignore me each time,
And briefly I am sure you are right,
Briefly, every single time,
I believe that you are the one I should be following,
Dragged behind you,
And not the other way around.
And then it comes,
It comes and I trip myself just so I will have chosen to go down,
And I am here,
Left
Wretched on my knees
And you never have to take the fall.
You never have to deal with it.
You're only in control when the sun is shining.
When the storms hit and knock the breath out of me like thunder rolling,
You plead you never chose a thing.
You traitor,
I would claw you from my chest!
But you already did that,
And I have no way to take revenge on you for your treachery-
You are me.
Your pain is mine.
(your joy is mine as well)
And so you get to,
Every time,
Abandon me and make me thank you for it,
And I am so sick of it I could scream.
You don't have consequences, Love.
You ARE a consequence.
What ever gave you the right
To turn my life upside down?
To leave me so unable to do anything but watch as I am dismantled by a force I never asked to feel?
I'd be happy, content, perfect,
(no, unfulfilled, empty, lost...)
To just give you up and cut the strings
That she
(whoever she may be, for I never get to choose, do I?)
Saws at with a bow, poison-tipped like a Shakespearean sword,
Plays, like violins singing melodrama.
I'd sever you from me in an instant and let you go
Play your games elsewhere,
Heart.
I swear I'd do it and dance in the streets,
(I'd have nothing, not know what to do)
If only it was possible.
(I am not damaged enough to give up)
I don't believe in love,
(Oh but I do, and sometimes I don't want to)
But I am married to my work, to you:
My job is not to be paid,
It is not to be happy,
(you are my chance for "happy")
It is simply and exhaustingly to survive your choices.
I don't get my life!
I get you.
I get kicked when I'm down, I get holes and hollows in places
I didn't know a heart filled,
Like fingertips and rib bones and lungs,
And that awful twisted spot above my stomach
That echoes cavernously with loneliness in the middle of the night
And sometimes in the lunchroom or on the subway.
(I get to think maybe that sadness will cease)
I get haunted dreams and impulses I can't control,
(sweet relief from a life of restraint)
I get your puppet strings
Jerking me to my knees
Knocking the pride out of me like breath.
(It speaks, but underneath I worship you)
I get your fingers inside my head, on the ridges of my brain,
Digging in like a migraine headache,
Gouging a place for someone I don't even know.
(Replacing the sorrow with joy so intense that I fear it.)
Who put you in me?
You don't fit here.
(you are the only thing that fits here)
You don't belong here.
(I am so afraid you don't.)
Like a parasite, you feed on me
(I need something to take this ache.)
And I am slowly dying of it, Heart.
(cure for my loneliness, arsenic for my mind)
I've tried everything I know,
I even tried to make you die inside me-
(I didn't know what else to do, I'm sorry)
Husk of a soul skittering along the undersides of my graffitied ribs,
But no, no you rose again,
Stronger,
And I... I wept in fear, Heart,
I really did.
(I made the hardest choice and you unmade it.)
Nobody knows that-
That I wanted you to go,
That I wanted you to stop, actually.
Nobody knows that I'd have happily never felt a thing for the rest of my life,
(only in fear, Heart, only in fatigue)
When they saw me fight so hard to become myself again.
(I couldn't beat the part of me that needs you)
But I knew,
I knew
Because the day you stretched and yawned after leaving me for months to rot around your frozen form,
I felt in me a terror I will never be able to explain,
Never be able to understand fully.
(Self preservation was never one of my talents, or yours)
This gibbering, skin crawling agony of panic,
That here you were again to bend me and break me,
That I was mortal, carrying a love that couldn't ever be killed.
It was the moment of clarity,
(of awe, as well, and terrifying vitality)
Before I decided I had to force myself to work with you,
Slap a smile on and go look for my next defeat,
(oh, maybe this time I could keep the love)
During which I saw my life unfold before me like a vast map,
Your destruction burning it to ashes in all the places I'd love to live,
Place by place by place,
Charred path to death over the lengths of decades,
No control, no say, just heat- and me, following along behind
Like a lost puppy
Trying to rebuild something substantial enough to make my home in.
I saw before me a life without rest,
Of this, the constant struggle to find and keep a wholeness I apparently don't deserve,
(I can't stop trying to deserve it)
To catch you and stuff you back where you belong and force you to lie still,
When I know you will only consume me with flames anyway.
I hate you, I really do.
(fear, not hate)
I hate you because I want to live.
(I am afraid you will destroy me)
I hate you because I want to die.
(I am afraid I will destroy you)
I hate you because if it were not for you, I would never suffer,
And I would have nothing to live for-
For I know nothing but the constancy of you,
Pushing me down, forcing me to my knees
And me struggling to rise and find a way to bear your burdens.
(GIFTS)
I hate you because I will never, ever be rid of you,
And I hate you because nobody should want to be rid of
What makes them live.
I hate you because underneath I still believe, somehow, that every single second's worth it,
Because that naive faith in you just won't die-
How can I stand that?
(How can my pride abide a hate for something vital, and a love for something toxic?)

And you've betrayed me every time, Heart,
And I don't forgive you.
(I already forgave you long ago)
And what if you've gone and done it again?
(Let me say I hate you so that I can have some control)
And how am I supposed to know that
For all these years to come?
*(Please don't go cold again, my Heart.)

Swinging on a swing
Playground buzz all around
All alone
~
Now she can ride a bike
So much later than when everyone else could
But she rides it everyday after school
~
Climbing high on a tree
Can't get back down
A chattering crowd forms and teachers need to intervene
~
Friends turn on friends
And what shoes you wear matters
She doesn't like growing up
~
Her uncle buys her a sketchbook
She draws people, some crying, some smiling
In the back corner of her junior high lunchroom
~
First day of high school
Wearing the outfit she took forever to pick out
So many faces, so much noise, a new world
~
First date, and it feel like she's floating
A smile she can't shake until
He finds someone prettier than her
~
New boy who takes things slow
First kiss with his hands wrapped around her waist
A whole new kind of face to face
~
Graduation
A dress that slaughtered her father's wallet
Bittersweet goodbyes
~
Boy promises to write
They go off to separate colleges
But slowly grow apart
~
She hangs up the phone
After telling him tearfully it was too hard to keep up
And they stay friends but distant
~
Then one day not-so-little-anymore-girl
Is walking her dog early before sunrise back in her hometown holding down a job out of college
She's always been a morning person when her high school love stops her with his smile the way he used to
~
After the breakup halfway through college
Due to circumstances the feelings come rushing back
And numbers are exchanged before dawn breaks
~
White veil and red roses
Another dress to break dad's wallet
But she Is beautiful as the love she has for the groom, her high school love
~
Finally can afford a real nice house
Two little boys playing in the big yard
A little ******* her hip, daddy with his arm around mommy like he used to back in high school
~
Daddy comes home from the doctor one day
She is in a screaming match with her youngest little girl who has just turned 13
Daddy has news. One of these days, he won't be coming home ever again
~
Mommy gets a call after tucking the kids in
She drives recklessly to the hospital
But when she arrives they can't find any life in him
~
Kids grow up strong and healthy
Beautiful children who raise another generation of beautiful children
She is a grandmother, but she misses the would-be grandpa every second until one day she comes back from the doctor... numbered days left on her life
~
Swinging on a swing
Front porch in silence  
All alone

Repost if you know or are a beautiful widow
Please comment I love to read people's interpretations of my work!

you're not friends with the insiders who won't let the outsiders in.
You make friends with those who let you in.

I have a message for the kid sitting in the back of the classroom
You know, the one with the bruises, ask him what's wrong he'll give you the dumbest excuses
"I fell down the stairs, and ran into the door"
But stairs and doors don't give black eyes and broken bones so what are you lying for?

I have a message for the prettiest girl in school
You know, The one hiding behind all that make-up and hairspray
Pretending she couldn't be having  a better day
Yet she's afraid to go back to her broken home
Because her step-dad hurts her mom and her brother won't leave her alone
School is her sanctuary
What you don't know can be scary.

I have a message for the boy on his skateboard
Sellings drugs and liquor to make a quick buck
Then he got caught for possession and now he's stuck
In that cell all by himself remembering what his friends said
"We're bros, forever" But they left him for dead.

I got a message for that wierd girl in the lunchroom
The one that eats alone,
She has no place to call home
She smells bad because she doesn't own a shower
Living in shelters, her life is out of her power
Because her parents messed up she has to hurt
But she wants to do better so she does her school work

I have a message for the boy blogging
Those cuts on his wrists are not cat scratches
They're more like past mistakes left on his arms in patches
He can't help how sad he always feels
But he refuses to be that kid "on pills"

I have a message for that girl with the strict parents
Wishing she could bring her girlfriend to meet the family
But she knows if she did they wouldn't be happy
Because being gay is a sin
And if you're gay you're not kin

****, what a world we live in.

I have a message for all the messed up kids
Who struggle in the daily lives they live.
You will be okay
Things will get better someday.
So put away that blade and pick up that paint brush
Don't end your life before you've felt the rush
Wait until you've had your first kiss
I promise you there will be so many moments of bliss
Put down that bottle of pills
You of all people deserve life's thrills
I know sometimes it's hard to catch the curveballs life throws your way,
Just get low and get ready to play

To the kids who feel lost and alone
I will be the one to welcome you home

Stranger in a strange land
Roaming the halls.
Lost between the feet of giants.
Outnumbered. Outmatched.

The lunchroom.
Already?
Where to sit? Who to talk to?
Salisbury steak. Yes.
Always analyzing.

Sitting with seniors.
How’d that happen?
Their excitement is my fear.
A friend. Finally.
Becky.

Yellow vehicle of safety.
Home.
I made it.
Only 719 more days to go.

Everyone only thinks about themselves,
but I only think about you;
I think about your face under a hot shower,
I think about what that hot water could do to my lips after kissing every inch of your body;
I constantly think about every inch of your body.

You breathe just like every other human; your heart beats in the exact same way as everyone else's does, but for some reason no other human, nor creature, can capture my attention & consume all of my thoughts (whether i'm conscious or not), like you can.

No one can forget my birthday yet still look so beautiful in that dress that you bought specifically to wear for me; no one can simply buy a dress like you can, & I know that sounds silly but the way you hand that cash over the counter & swipe your debit card makes my heart melt & my molecules rattle; my whole internal self is just one giant tambourine when you're near, & the music that my cells & veins produce will be played lightly in the background everytime you kiss my cheek & grab my hand while i'm driving.

As long as you continue to wear that dress for me & take the hottest of showers no matter what society tells you, then I will forever keep running after you no matter how fast you go & will always remember what it felt like to see you across the lunchroom;
casually falling in love with the thought of you,
with the thought of one day writing something for you that i'd actually be proud of,
with the thought of seeing your whole vulnerable self laying underneath my covers & knowing that I made the right decision for the first time in my life,
with the thought of kissing every inch of your body,
with the thought of losing my voice while you're the only one speaking;
with the thought of screaming out the only words that i've ever known to be true, "I Love You."

Look what you've done!
double the serving size of torment
the battle has begun
hunger pangs won't relent
another helping: slashes of lament
I'd rather be empty
necessary rations, I resent
beneficial to you, poisonous to me
drifting through the days, rugged debris
I've become a lunchroom paralytic
ignore me, mediocre bourgeoisie
not a stomach, but a heart granitic
I ask for seconds - of love, not larder
For once, I feel full. Incomparable ardor.

Going to school today not even making a sound.
The adrenaline rush makes my heart pound.
Just me and my lunch box today thats all I need.
I got so much food in here the whole lunchroom I could feed.
No ones going to have to steal my lunch today.
I will practically be giving it away.
The bell rings it’s time to begin with first hour.
I sit front row with my lunch box and don’t even cower.
They laugh at me saying “Oh did mommy make your lunch?”
After first hour I am in the halls, they taunt and punch.
I stagger to second hour still holding my lunch box.
These sticks and stones fell like logs and rocks.
It’s ok though.
Only two more hours to go.
By third class Iv’e been quite abused.
Teachers laughing so fckng amused.
the bell rings its finally time to go and eat.
Once again in the lunchroom I have no seat.
I raise my lunch box standing proud and high.
I yell as loud as I can “who’s ready to die?”
They all laugh like I am some fckng joke.
This lunch box is about to open and smoke.
I reach inside and flailed my armed hand.
Firing off rounds of hate, I am making a stand.
I don’t know how many I shot and killed that day.
But this lunch box warrior got his way

my eyes fell into my dreams last night...i searched for them for three million days...
i went to the halls but found only suits of rotten gold...i went to the movies but found only ******* with tiny worms *******...i went to the bookstore but couldn't afford to enter...i went to the cemetery and tripped over all the empty graves...i went to the city but couldn't walk because i was hit by three billion cars...i went to the schools but found only ear less teenagers with red bull smiles...i went to the lunchroom and smelled the greasy spoons...i went to the barber but to many hairs filled my mouth and made it hard to breath...i went to the swimming pool but found polluted water and oily animals devouring any leftovers...i went to the hillside but the view was blocked by tall black clouds...i went to the forest but fell into a plastic bucket...i went to the mountain tops but found nothing not even snow...i went to the valley and threw up on all the dead bodies...i went to the steppes and found robotic horses with glaring red eyes and really bad breath...i went to the hospital and found only sickness and no health...i went to the ocean but could not swim with the dolphins because they tried to eat my clothes...i went to the islands and found only weapons sharpened with blood...i went to the stars but could not see...my eyes have fallen and i can't pick them up...

Into the crash, imploded. Escape from light, I've known it was, the righteous and right thing to do. Where is the name? I'm listening. I hear the storm, it's growing for me, an old familiar know-it-all, with a glowing knack for mediums in the park each seventh Sunday, it takes a demon to splice my hearing, I'm in a covert closed-box first-class second-rate fairy-tale, and it is my time to start going for something transfixed, something the locals bare their graves and lapse over the journey the girls take heavily with their ****** and their men are swaying with the light. Taking their time to get to know them, until the lye takes off their fingertips and their lips cool an echo that I've cured my ears to listen closely towards.

There isn't a god. A h or even a sophomoric after-thought. This is the bed and our sheets don't know us. Is it her blood or is it the withdrawals showing, I'll sew the girls to their cotton, and make them toss their batons up, wear green and green and raise their lacrosse sticks. I've liked wearing lipstick, crossing my legs, and telling them, "you can't touch this." I take the mescaline and disrupt the contest. I carry the heads in a duffel bag, even though the lawyers don't recommend it, I carry the duffel bag in the restroom. I race 100 yards around the lunchroom, I play tag and go, I taste the subjects. Sweet, sugary, and coming onto me. She's aging denim and platinum rings.

I stop the door. I count for hours. I take all the dead-ends, all these lover's cross-eyed, pouring their pants down for supper and ecstasy, they'll take the anodyne and enter where their hearts spread disease on a dark submariner spring, where the clothes can start coming off. Lift your wings and your mantra will start rising. All of your different voices, that realize the different voices of your name, pour your light out, fill my hands with your love, and take the hour into the coastline- I'll be the one to call it enough. Even the voices can be the drug. Even her voice it could be enough.

It's the touch that knows your name. It's the governement that shears it down. It's the fibers that haunt you, while your fingertips reach slightly down along the edge of your mattress, where your sheets meet the ground. Let her be your goddess and arrange your services and coffin, the guests all wear black, and your mother raises the sun on the telephone. It might feel scripted, it might feel nostalgic, but don't let your mind turn blank. This is a stark horizon, your hands aren't here to supervise you. Your eyes can't join the rush. These are the skins that know you, they see you more than once, they call you in for the night, they tell all the people of your fame. There is really nothing to hide from, here where the desert can call you, up from the floor where they've found you, is it your face on the demons that reared you from the drug?

This is the sound and it haunts me, it takes its overture to the half-life. It takes the horror and reveals its torture to the public, where the joy-filled guitar chords pleasured me with so many gifts I always told myself they weren't enough.

Primes are around us, the people are march now. They can't keep their eyes off the madness, it's more than an hour now, they race towards their coastline, the twilight stretched mischievously passed their sons. They dig for tomorrow, the chisel at marble, until their hands undo the prisons their art dissolves. The primes are around us, it's unnerving and lifeless. New weekenders unearth these plasticine mannequin statues that ride Western through the values up the arms.

Here is a hero, no mother or father, at least not the name that they gave them, he took them out West, towards the yucca and cactus, towards the orange and stark calmness that only history could resolve the aching pains that our parents took with us through the thaw. This ice-world is melting, the seasons are ending, the shades of our evils take all of us, alone, threaded together, but stitched on the embers of some soul-less, tailored, empty null.

Here is the room, here are the stacks of dried lumber that we never thought could take us through the thaw. These are the bookends, Minnie and Mickey, white furry bonanza lost on the albicant sinews of bakelite slippers mixed into the dance routines of temporally observant minds that wouldn't dare feed themselves on the breaths of time. Here he is, like he was, not with his name tomorrow, not with her name for morning, they arc themselves inadequately, and even the doctors recommend that some soft-drinking orange-flavored omen takes their luggage and their fears, and drag them through an ocean, where no one could ever see them coming, into an aluminum jungle of preservatives where natives and islanders can sacrifice through them their judgements of a failed family history on the surplus of cities and their truths.

Here is the sound, here it strikes. Here is the room, cold and white. These are the books, here are the horrors. Here is the fashion but there's no rhythm there's no order. This is the rug, it's shaggy, it's a mess, it's distressed, it's unfolding, and it carries it's path of swine. It's a nuisance, it is caustic, it observes the unfortunate and reserves a placement for the matte sublimation of time.

And through the dirt-patterned bone-white skeleton keys basking on the rocks in some slumber of a 31st century pond, the people dancing punch their dance-cards, show their tattooes, and frollick in the great beyond. Here and in mourning, waxing on the miens of their corruption, whistling against the steel television sets from off of their 1982 television sets where they drink ***** and orange juice and laugh at Sylvester and Reboot on their regular Saturday morning routine watching Saturday morning cartoons.

Youth. In between a doctorate and mastery of language, there is nothing left to undo. A familiar feeling arriving to the airport, a tremendous evil summons the Zeppelin pilots to their terminals too. There is a horse that keeps on all of its riders, but still there's no pleasure that can keep us two.

As high as the wind and the rye, they search for the blight in our eyes, they summon our lips to a lie, tumbling and showing the time. These are the stars that we promised to give away. The legs on this pavement are slaves, half of this bad, shapes of her heaven and neverland, muffled like the secret that we have promised to tow, and the music is ahead of the shoal, out where our ocean wrote the seashore in, and the coastline carries our words on the wind. And the basement hoards our fears so we can move, away from the televisions where our parents keep their eyes' glued. Something that we promised to do, regardless of how familiarity thwarted to do, so don't break mine, don't take mine. I am the start of your pain, I wear the crown of your king, I make your bed and obey to keep the door open to our fray, where it gets us through the night. As I was told, you were supposed to know. I was tonight, I had the rights to you tonight. Your lips, their fire, the weapons for your fight, I caught myself in a lie, somewhere beyond the tremendousness of your see-through past, beyond this sea of glass where the sea creatures swim in the tales we had. Suffering past, the sea of glass, we once had.

I can see tonight, the foreman, he has told me where to go. Listen to the... I am here to help. I am going through the going, if I'm going to last, help me last, here in the thicket of the summer or the winter, this wild where we listened to the sound of snow crashing on these winter shoals where the penguins passed, and the lips froze against the icicles these icebergs flashed. The camera, suffering back, took me back, the sounds of the crash haunting back, to the weekend last summer we never had. The sleeping lasts, the winter grasps, our words have past, you're sleeping fast, eating glass, shining black. I'm suspended in liquid gas, shivering at the wicked words the women packed, the sharp synonyms that women had. I'm half of the man I was dreaming of, in the winter passed the winter doves, their heads hiding under glass. I'm just a splinter of my past, lilting as a tumbling black, simple jack, here on a card spliced I'm never to once again see my little world.

This is the sound of enough, the sound of people as they fall away. Through the windows of time, the ladder falls down inside of my mind. It's hard to live where the stars survived. In a library of dreams I once lived each day. Each of the curtains had dropped, and each of the women had left. The god of me took every need I thought I'd keep, for half of my past, was only the start of a bell I craved. Even if nothing was the sound for today. Nothing can be the sound that I gave. My muscles down, my bones breaking down, the sound of the humans buried alive underground. The choice he gave as the music played for all of these muffled thugs circling this parade on the hill.

It can be as hard to be a star. It's the cost of the heart that beats, on the coastline your readied float brings your corpse to the flood. Often lilting, often swaying, these things you pictured would be your life under this sun. If your buttons move, and you want to live free? And you claw your eyes out, just to call it off, every world you kept your lessons furtively aimed, in a match held with love, against some chanceless hope of taking the game. Each of these ends, keeping your pictures to the heavens, if his name should take your heart in need? One of these wombs where music had begun, the gnarly garden of space unkempt and calling her grave, where your name costs your fame, and the poison lifts this track up, and your train comes, it moves you backwards, even if you weren't the one, this could be the ghost you call and say, this is enough. This is the world where your friends can't go alone. Sounds and chimes and groans. Soundtracks scored into the chalk of your bones. Another, another, another, a mother.

Until this lover you chose by name, can't see. Until this lover you saw inside, can't see you very clearly tonight, you can't get by. You only just realized you're not the kindest mind, in fact yours is the weakest light.

It happened several years ago
But it is a true story in the flow
A Senior Citizen woman being my Grandmother
She was a strong woman like no other
She worked as a Board Of Education Lunchroom Manager at P.S. 202 in Brooklyn, New York
As my Grandmother was leaving on a regular day, a Mugger was getting ready to pounce
It all happened on the busy street of Atlantic Avenue
My Grandmother was on her way to the Doctor
But when she got in the middle of the street, the mugger showed his attack mystique
However, the Mugger didn’t know he was in for a surprise
Yet my Grandmother showed that Mugger her realize
She literally knocked the mugger off his feet
The Mugger tried another attempt in attack being another retreat
Well my Grandmother showed that Mugger, this senior citizen was determined to not be beat
What do you think happened?
The Mugger got sacred and ran off
Now my Grandmother 5’ 5’ being short, but I never said she was weak
Big things come in small packages
My Grandmother being the Biblical David and defeating Goliath being the Mugger
My Grandmother’s response being her slugger power
She reigned supreme and that Mugger knows what that means
This is a true story and I am being honest
Senior Citizen’s have more power than Social Security, and their strength being their unity.

Dear students, the summer has ended.
The school year at last has begun.
But this year is totally different.
I promise we'll never have fun.

"We will study lots of mathematics,
and classes will last all day long.
Instead of the pledge of allegiance,
we'll belt out math equations.

"We'll never play games in the classroom.
You're not welcome to bring in your toys.
It's punishable by death to run in the hallways.
It's prison for life if you make lots of noise.

"For homework, you'll 10 hours a night.
You'll have to read lots of books.
For field trips we'll go to the local library
and get lots of veggies for a few million bucks.

"The lunchroom will only serve whole wheat
overcooked veggies and boiled milk
Yes, that's what I did.
Im the king now

Maybe I learned it face down into a pillow
          Feeling heavy day old mascara lift off light eyes, salvaging the reputation
that enervates, dead-beat bones. Maybe it was the way
     Boys seized at your hair
         only to learn that man-handling pins down your sanity
Left wondering if he really thought you were a *****.
    Maybe it was how I’d cut
         my knees scaling the rock invested grounds
of the alley between our houses; slitting my legs
     into paper cut towns, rolling with vigor. Maybe it was how you
         Didn’t learn to exist without being wanted
How the right amount of despondent desperation in a voice would launch her hips,
     and they’d sit layered in his smoke and your culpability,
         compulsive, taking in the show. Wishing you hadn’t attended
Or maybe it was how we read each other romance novels
     in the lunchroom, sharing particulars
          of genitals and true love.
Maybe it was the way we learned to be quiet
     our insides begging for touch one more time, the sweetness
          we discovered in the bones of each others backs, in the closeness
I felt when you told me about your relationship with your mother
    Maybe it was the face close, Lips on the side of a neck.
           Fingers run down your spin. His we still aren’t together
I wonder when Haley comes back. The way he alone,
     creates the complete ruination of a half broken body.
           The way I loved him anyway
the way you learn to stay quiet.

There is a boy who has grown into a man. A boy whose a boy and has room to grow.
He's hurting. He stands up around the lunchroom to throw away what he made himself eat, hearing voices everywhere knowing none will remember him. Only but a small few will know his legacy and maybe they'll tell tales about him.
   The boy looks at his friends yearningly, knowing that only a couple truly accepts him. Truly…loves him. The boy looks at his arms, covered in scars they reflect the war going on in his mind. A war of voices, screaming. Insane. Deranged. The boy wants to cry, wants to embrace his friends. He wants to be accepted and told it'll be okay.
   Will it be okay? Will he come back from the war? He shakes, both his head and body. Craving what destroys him, he sits back. Will it be okay? Will it be okay? It'll be okay. It'll be okay.

We broke up yesterday
And we weren't even dating

But it feels exactly the same as I remember
It's just like last April

I'm staring at your from across the lunchroom
Knowing I shouldn't

But hoping and praying
I'll catch your eye

I just want to see you smile at me again
Like you used to

So in love
So perfect for me

I want to text you
Talk to you

Tell you about my day
Read your funny messages

But I can't
Because I broke the part of you that cares about me

And I can't get it back
So I'll have to live with what I so desperately desired

But now I know that I never wanted that
And could never handle you going away

Life is still going on
But it's not as fun

And it's only been a day
I'm so lost

Please don't let this be permanent
Please accept my apology

Please don't stop
Loving me

At the sound of the bell
rush the lunchroom
where melting hot cookies
make a sweet perfume.
Some kids have brown bags
names scribbled in pen,
while other kids have nobody
to pack bags for them.

Those are the kids
sitting on the lawn.
Smoke stuck in their shirts
from cigarette smoking moms.
They have ***** hands,
purple under eyes,
holes in their shirts,
and shoes untied.
They are kids
that don’t have names.
So easily forgotten
and forgotten again.

I’m among them,
the lonely, lunch-less, wild,
torn clothes and tangled hair.
“Problem child!”

Then there are glass eyed kids
ritzy and rotten
with button up shirts
of egyptian cotton.
They garble their candy
they snicker and crunch,
while us kids on the grass
watch their giant mouths munch.

I am used to what happens
every September.
It’s my birthday
my parents never remember.
but my friends present me
a candle to light
and I make a wish
they hold my hands tight.

*I wish
that we could all look out
for one another.
I wish
that we could be
each others
sisters and brothers.
I wish
that we could not be alone
and live together.
I wish
that we could make
our own family
that lasts
Forever.

Summer nights long forgotten filled with sticky air and ***** feet.
Nights that didnt begin until 10 pm.  
I was always the ghost when we played ghost in the graveyard,
running to the same hiding spot among the wheat every time.  
All I could hear was my breathing and their screams as they pretended to look for me and very quickly give up
I picked at grass for hours as the moon inflated and the air tricked you into thinking it was December and not August
  They would always start a bonfire and tell stories and laugh.
I have scars on my feet from running so fast down that dirt road,
always just stopping before hitting the interstate.  
I was only 10.  I still believed in belonging.

I am always the ghost on friday nights.  
Empty invites,
“come back to my place for a few drinks, my parents are out of town.  Everyone’s coming.”
Just take me home.
Please just take me home.
Don’t look at me like that.
My house is the third on the right.

The girl I made a blood pact with won’t look at me in the hallway.  
The boy I held as he cried about his father sits with a girl I know he can’t love.
I have friends, oh I have so many friends.  

We used to run through the forests like our soles were on fire.  
Little did we know soon it wouldn’t be just the skin under our feet that was burning.  
We used to pretend we had super powers.  
She used to say she could make force fields,
and I don’t doubt for a second that when she refuses dinner and goes to her room early that a force field is exactly what she has made.  
He said he was so strong he could lift buildings,
now he can’t even lift his eyelids as we make eye contact across the lunchroom.  
I said I could talk to animals and now I speak more to my dog than to my father.  
We said we had superpowers.  
Everyone has a superpower.
I don’t even have to be drunk not to feel anything.

I was voted most likely to rule the world by my class.
I didn’t even think people knew I existed.
I talk to a boy who is so far away and as he claims he will see me soon I can’t help but think the future he speaks of when he’s high is nothing but a pipe dream.
Doesn’t he know that I’m destined to rule the world?
Doesn’t he know I have superpowers?  
Doesn’t he know that on that night they forgot me 7 years ago I learned that my home wasn’t on the right?
Or the left?
Doesn’t he know that I’m lost?

It seems as though,
My true friends are leaving,
And I’m simply stuck in their shadow.

But you my dear friend,
One of which I’m believing,
Our friendship will never come to an end.

At the high school cafeteria lunchroom,
We shared laughter and thorough teasing.
Is where I truly had time to bloom.

Seemingly is no long just another word,
Just a reminder of your comedic being,
You’ve yet to become matured.

I hope that I’ve ruined bananas for you,
This is for now the end unceasing,
But yet, my friend, I thank you.

I wish you didn't grow up feeling like you had to compromise yourself
Remember the first time you waxed your eyebrows?
Why was your immediate reaction to pick up a pair of tweezers and pluck all those thick hairs off your face?
Was it because the girls you went to school with had thin arcs above their eyes?
How could eyebrows make a person feel self-conscious?
I wish you didn't grow up feeling like you HAD to be like everyone else
The push-up bras from Victoria Secret your mother would never let you buy
The light wash Hollister jeans every middle schooler wore
The makeup from MAC featured on the faces of the popular girls in school
These were all things you grew up obsessing over
But instead, you settled for the bras from Target
25% off sale
The jeans from GAP and Old Navy
The makeup from Marshalls, your mom, bought for you
You looked at it with such disappointment
She couldn't understand why you needed all those things
When she asked if you liked what she bought for you  
You put on a half-assed smile and responded
"Si Mami, gracias."
…
She wouldn't understand
…
At the back of Ms. Pinero's math classroom
You sat alongside two boys
When they asked where you were from
You told them
"El Salvador"
There were no follow up questions
Just a couple of laughs and nudges between them
"Say something then."
You complied
Another round of jaw drops and claps
As if speaking in your native tongue deserved a standing ovation
"That is so ****."
Yes, a 14-year-old sexualized due to a couple of phrases spoken in a language foreign to the rest
As the bell rang, you walked out and right behind you could be heard the words:
"I should've known you were Latina."
You watched as their eyes undressed you, followed by the cue of stares from other classmates in the hall
But this is what you wanted, right?
Validation and acceptance?
Tell me then, why did their commentary unsettle you so much?
…
Mornings you walked into the school cafeteria with friends
The anxiety you felt pulsating through your body as you passed the assistant principal
His eyes had a tendency of wandering
But all was excused because he had a daughter and a wife
As if raising a child refrains one from being a machista
As if his presence in the lunchroom didn't suffocate and intimidate the rest of us
But we held our tongues
"It's not that big of a deal."
Girls learn to live their lives with the use of this phrase at their convenience
…
You lived your middle school years abiding by the "likability rule."
Convincing yourself if you remained
Gentle
Quiet
Selfless
Submissive and Obedient
You could escape the policing of your body and tongue
If you, a girl was deemed likable, you could avoid the pain others repeatedly succumbed to
Your high school years you burned those vices
And in turn, you became what society refers to as "the difficult girl."
Loud
Confrontational
Self-aware
Rebellious
Or in the term others would coin you as:
A *****
…
When your body began to mature
You weren't the only one to notice
You can recall the days you walked into school
Receiving looks of disapproval
And you watched
As other girls walked by, wearing something just like you  
How quickly those same eyes looked the other way
And it was then you learned that your voice wasn't the only disturbance for the public
So was the shape of your body
All the qualities your mother told you to embrace
You grew to hate
As if you had the decision to control the rate at which your body developed
…
The days you spent as the new kid
Living in the background noises of immigration control jokes
"Haha, you didn't get deported?"
No *******, I did not.  
You played it off like it didn't matter
But it did.
Deep down, you know it did.
No amount of comedic "genius" could drown out the ignorance of those boys
…
In the tenth grade
Rumors spread of someone's photoshop skills
Even as I write this to you, I can sense the discomfort in the room
Why didn't we fight harder for those girls?
Why did YOU hear about what happened and settle with the prevalent fact that "boys will be boys"?
Is that a justification for ****** behavior?
Why didn't we encourage them to be better?
You worried about those girls, and you wondered whether they told themselves the same thing you told yourself four years ago
"It's no big deal."
…
When the spotlight shone upon your friend
Humiliated by a rich narcissist
You stormed with remarkable fury to the counselor's office demanding justice
In the face of your triumph and efforts you were told
"Sweetie, there isn't much we can do."
But there was…
There was so much more that could've been done
The score settled 0-1
Down the hallway you remember your friend with the rusted orange curls
Cheeks and neck spotted red with rage after finding out the truth
You both saw the events unfolding
No punishment enforced
No threat ensued
Merely another instance of a boy's ****** behavior excused
…
Now,
Hearing your little sister tell you of the boys in her class who make fun of her
You do your best to ensure her it's no indication they like her
Because if they did, they would bestow respect upon her rather than insults
You spot those boys in the halls and you glare at them
Letting your presence be known
If things get worse, you'll be the one to handle them
…
Your mother's annual Thanksgiving party
And among the guests featured around your dinner table is the authentic macho
A true family man who adheres to respect, strength, and the protection of his family
When he asked you of your future plans
He displayed a face of amusement rather than one of seriousness
As if your capacity for success is determined by what lies in between your legs
When you stood your ground and fought for yourself
He put his hand out in a gesture to stop with the words
"Okay, okay, there's no need to be sensitive."
He turned to ask your mother with a degrading laugh
"Is she always like this?"
To which you responded, "Yes."
And his words fell short of sexist comebacks
You took a nice long look at his wife
Who did all she could to avoid eye-contact with you
…
You grow up being told to be proud,
But be so in a way that doesn't cast a spotlight on you
Be driven,
But not so much you intimidate the rest
Strive to be competitive,
But refrain from showing teeth, or you'll scare away the competition
Fight for your right,
But don't incriminate anyone else while doing so
Wear what you want,
But for the love of God please don’t wear that
Address your concerns,
But don’t be so emotional about it
…
You've lived your life with endless restraints on who you should and shouldn't be
I wish you had torn through those norms earlier
I wish you refused to settle for less all those years ago
Here you are
Reading this,
Let the world know it is not entitled to change you
Let the people know you are not limited to a figure of gratification that lives to please the rest
…
You were born to raise hell
Don't you ever be quiet about it
…
-c.alejandra