I’ve got all the things I’m supposed to say-
just buried beneath

Home, skipped with every symptom
known to fifth-grade-kind,
sick of every re-run
and trapped outside of storybooks,

what adventure could be better than emptying
the overflowing closet?

Even the sickest faker
would clean if they envisioned
a clubhouse in a 3 by 3 foot space

I don’t know that we are quite so mundane as the diamonds,

rare, 
nor like the snowflakes:

Unique,
or merely multifaceted?

The light inside our souls’ zones
goes down in shades,

I’m sorry to your craft beer, but I scan the cocktails. 
It’s not that I want a fruity drink— I just can’t pass the citrus. 
I’ve seen berries turn what’s sweet to sweeter then melt to nothing, 
but my mandarin soul could make a stoic pucker. 

The man, whose phrase translates
to my grammar if not my custom,
reassures me literally,

Dip with me into the lakes,
immersed in murky water, which covers 
how far we
have yet to go.

If I have said the truth permitted and nothing but the truth permitted,
have you seen, in my navigation of social convention,
my honesty? My openness?

Strong and small and fragile and soft,
and always still standing-