You’re walking on eggshells, and everything you do to try to make it better backfires,
since some people don’t want to be satisfied.
Vindictive vendettas taken out on you,
like some people need something to be mean to,
and if they see you as a person, you can’t be their thing,
so they call you a problem and use you for their pain,
when their hate is their own fault,
and there’s nothing you can do
to make someone understand what they choose not to-Read More »
You called like a god, celebrity
or college freshman,
so I put my Nair down, wrapped a towel around my shame,
glued my wet ear to the fragile phone, said hello
instead of, “Why me?” and let you worship, effuse like I
was way more than the wallpaper at my brother’s parties.
I’d been the entertainment once, back before the parties-
whispering nicknames and manipulations, like a kid sister alone can.
That was back before you, drivers licenses,
meet ups. But you were not before forsaken plans,Read More »
You’re drawn towards me like we’re perfectly opposed…
like one of us put ourselves into the wrong box,
because heaven knows I don’t want to be shocked by your sparking outlet.
I just want to run, but I stay, every time. Like I’m…
electrocuted- Stuck. Like I’m numb- stuck.
Seems safer to turn the power off when men hang on me. Three at one time.
They each try to caress my neck at once,Read More »
Diplomacy! Wicked gift!
I want to know if Imagined Me has started being perfect yet-
Your little pet that I should really care less about, for she is not mine.
I do inform, like that’s a boundary.
Read More »When you’re twelve and seek escape from family, they provide the ride,Read More »
You, my first love with your padding to my room to draw
a mural with me, with my three-years-behind-yours fine motor skills.
Green easel- hodgepodge I never erased.
You, with your independence, hero-power, and readiness,
senior trips and friends I always joined but never made.
“How was it letting the class freak be on top?”Read More »
Sometimes I think the funniest thing about him is that I found him normal-
Getting pulled over, breaking down, breaking back in,
my bloody hand from climbing a fence to get to school and the mysterious sock
that we used to clot, and how that was god.
Rock walls tied to the truck while directing traffic on the interstate
so that ducks could pass- It was
SMOOTH AS BUTTER! BOWL OF SUGAR! WHOO-Read More »
1.
He smiles, ‘Not you—
all the other girls who think your thoughts, differently,’
when his joke responds to me,
my thoughts, my way.
Almost like he was
not listening
or like his wounds are so big that he’s
a little trigger-happy,
prone to lash out–
to think his thoughts, differently.
Or, like he is lying to me.
Reciting the Good
Guy Creed
that he never believed.
2.
I smile, ‘Of course,’ with the slow release of lips.
The bitter
aftertaste of important words swallowed.
3.
He breathily laughs,
puts his hand up to pacify.
My lips form a smile, like a
dog playing dead.
4.
Maybe if you touch my hand,
my hand will have touched yours
as though saying it accepts the apology
you don’t make.
5.
He joys his jokes
that tinkle like rebukes,
and I sit down,
nod a smile—
well-trained.
6.
But my eyebrows flash knowingly,
for a tiger provoked
decides.
Maybe walks inside.
She patronizes the cage.
7.
Urgent words wash down
so easily
chased by the lies in which we were raised.
8.
When I become a butterfly, I fly into outer space,
and then out of it through one chip
in a snow globe of glass.
It’s not in the cliché way
you smile, say Dad and Mom “stayed home”.
It’s the picturesque shot of you
walking into church alone.Read More »
It is the trauma that teaches me to announce my threshold of pain,
high as the pilot’s realm where the air is clear,
the sky is above, and the ground is clouds beneath your feet.
Threshold of pain is the title, but the real name is mask,
strong as my steel iron soul; They will both break as one.
It is the shards of my very self that I keep cutting my foot on
