If my emotions have been mangled,
let us not say that they’ve been
disfigured or mutilated.
Let us just call them crushed—
ground into a fine powder
woven throughout my tapestry,
Category: Social-Emotional Development
Spiral Down Staircase
Spiral Down Staircase
Weirdly good at breaking down,
been doing it since I was seven-
teen, been needing
to since I was
three, been needing to
take my time doing it, been
needing to
honor other people’s
Paradox
Tried to scoop a lie up in my hands
like water, but all I could
find was pure in the blue,
plus some contamination,
ground
I want to know
if songs can sing,
Lots
I love you
over the moon—
all the way above it,
high above.
Around the dark side
and plummeting downwards,
past the other side
of the earth,
around the bottom,
back up our side.
But still never touching—
and I don’t want it to,
Sweetness
Watermelon, just enough hydration to
get your body, enough sugar
to get your heart, stickiness
to snag your mind,
and I’m just enough rind to still be there
once you dare to take a bite. You’re so
summer, that I keep creeping up,
open roads that could use a little fuel, board
Muse: a Person. Crutch: but the Distance Between
Once upon your Kindness, I met a
marine who was a nun, and she could
waltz with as much Grace
as she could cut a cake with a scythe
at her wedding! You’d have Served me, had you
been at the reception, lemonade, Stronger a
yellow than that of the sun, that lights up the world for
you to be something I see.
I’d have passed you the strawberries for
her Genuine cucumber-butter sandwiches,
Sweet like Compassion, grass green like
the itch of being Alive. I’d have
Coral
I want to be the green palm tree standing between
the sand and your pink sea-side cottage. I mean,
I want everyone who washes up on your
shore to know that I decorate your home.
Slices
You shoot me a mere glance, while I’ve zeroed in on
my twiddled thumbs, but my peripheral vision
fires a snapshot of your energy’s self-directing, and
I straddle it. I revisit it alone on the toilet, in the recliner.
Risk
Someday, I will learn
I can respect another’s autonomy and my
own at the same time,
allow others control while
taking responsibility,
give people my emotions without
manipulating theirs,
and be dominated by
compassion instead of fear—
Alphabet Ravine 