Day 29

Part of the grieving

is wearing her clothes.

Tucking her blouses into my own skirts,

wearing three-sizes-too-small slippers,

wrapping her sweatshirts around me

close.

The way I used to hold her.

My mother watches me leave my bedroom

covered in relics,

memories of saintly, tissue-paper skin.

My mother watches me leave my bedroom

and smiles the smile she smiles

when she does not understand me,

but knows

I understand myself.

For The Little Woman

My great-grandmother died this morning. I do not have words right now. Instead, I'm going to share a post from my old blog. I wrote this on Christmas 2011 after visiting with Gram for the first time in too long. I love that woman.

I went to see my great-grandmother yesterday. She is ninety-five years old. It was the first time I had seen her since her birthday in September (I think), and I felt bad because I really should be seeing her a whole lot more. She's always so happy to see us.

Gram has lived through every major national event since World War One. She has the most incredible memories, and the stories that she tells are amazing and often come out of nowhere.

I learned a lot about life from my visit yesterday. We had been talking about my cousin's plans for college, and then she asked me if I had any plans for myself. I don't, really. Not for sure, anyway. She asked if I wanted to do theater, and I said that I really, really want to, and do you know what she told me?

She said that she hoped I could do it because she knew how happy it makes me.

I had no idea how much I needed to hear that.

A few minutes later, as she was trying to describe my clothing style, she let her voice trail off a bit. Then, she took my hand and told me, "you're just...you're just you."

I didn't think about it then, but that was a really wonderful thing for her to say. I've been searching for the words to define myself for such a very long time, and it was nice to be reminded that no matter what, I am me.

Thank you to the little old woman with the crooked fingers and hair like cotton candy. I owe you one.

Day 26

When we meet tonight, he does not hug me.
I stumble through small talk for awhile- 
it has been too long. There is not enough for me
to say.
I let him speak the most-
it is familiar, like the slow tying of a knot.
I want to cover him in rope burns. 
I think he knows.
It is too tight to untie now.

He asks if I've added any medication since the last time we spoke.
Not because I seem happier, 
but because I am tangled in angry twine.
I seem pissed at the world, he says.
He is right.
He does not know.
If we're being honest, 
I have always been this way-
cutting the ropes slowly at first,
then all at once.

Day 24

For my father, my teacher, my friend.

While the rest of the family is sleeping,

Pa Joad is waking up to a yesterday covered in dust.

Dust ripening the windowpanes.

dust harvested from tent camps.

dust retreating across the plains.

dust going home.

Day 23

Things to do when you fail your calculus final

The grade is a cigarette. 
You will want to crush it underfoot, to stamp ashes into the pavement. 
The grade is a cigarette. 
You will feel like a collapsed lung.

When you make eye contact with your teacher for the first time all day, remember that you do not know him. Don't imagine his thoughts or fill his head with concern for your future, your falling grades. 
You do not know him. 
For all you know, he could be thinking of baseball. 
For all you know, you're just a student who struck out.

Remind yourself that in the space of two school years, you've revised your definition of a low test score from 99.9 percent 
to the sound of a plane crash.
You were a genius once, a walking abacus. Today, 
you are the back of the classroom, 
the steepest learning curve.

Day 22

Today is not this poem. There is too much
story in it that does not belong to me.
Today is not for everyone to read.
I will not publish others' invisible ink.

Instead, 
my lips will fold around the space between sunrises
and swallow sadness that tastes like horizon.
Push sunset secrets down my throat 
and relish in the aftertaste.

Day 19

My sister lets me borrow her sunglasses.

I take her everywhere she wants to go-

heart in my stomach,

shaking hands at 9 and 3-

This is new.

She puts the sunglasses on for me at a red light.

I pretend it is my mother driving 

instead of me.

That I am my mother.

My heart returns to its home.

My clock hands do not tremble.

This is good.

The light changes again,

and I am not my mother.

My sister and I play dress-up in the front seat.

We are advisory speed signs.

Yellow lights.

too small to be heeded.

too small to be alone.

Day 18

Today is a hijacked carnival ride. 
Today is cotton candy stomachaches.
Motion sickness. The fist in my belly.
The dizzying teapot.
The twister.

I am seven years old.
My cousin and I are pinwheels 
spinning too fast.
scared.
She begs the man with cigarette eyes to turn off the Tilt-A-Whirl.
I am silent.
She screams into his tobacco cheekbones.
I am silent.
She pleads with his nicotine lips until he parts them in submission 
and everything 
Stops.
I am silent.
She vomits next to a bumper car. 
I am silent.
The cigarette eyes take one last drag.

Day 17 or I've Got a Lot Going On

things i haven’t finished ye

two baskets of dirty laundry
on my mind
(and also in my room)
,
blankets cocooned in the corner
on a chair
holding pen for useless
(i sit there sometimes)
,
second-day showerless shoulders
slump in silence
i should scrub them
,
should do homework
,
build empires
,
i should read essays
,
write universes
,
i should
i think
i
i
think
,
should
,
I’ve been thinking a lot lately,
and I haven’t finished that eithe

Days 15 and 16 or What To Say When Your Best Friend Gives You The Ring

Day 15
For frozen fanfare and street side photography,
PROM! and poetry and passive aggression (but only to twenty-something assholes),
for giving ourselves the literal cold-shoulder on nighttime walks to the parking lot,
for the future clink of silver-on-silver,
For you. For me.
For forever.

Day 16
You’ll notice I haven’t been keeping a countdown.
Not because I fear the not-so-distant distance
(I do)
or our last walk down the hallway
(I do)
Best friend, if it were possible to count down from infinity,
today would be infinity and one.
52.3 miles is nothing when our friendship runs marathons.
We are so far from any endings.
I love you.

Day 12

For my 2013 Louder Than A Bomb team. You are my life and my love and my light. Thank you for staying with me.

I have never felt so beautiful about a poem.

Today, my heart is in all the right places, spinning swiftly around my ribcage and fluttering into my palms,

into my poem. I 

have never felt so beautiful.

Not even when my best friend kisses me on the forehead

and calls me “amazing”, 

not even when she is teaching me how to breathe again, 

I will never feel the beauty of recovery, 

the wonder of discovery so much 

as when I am watching her from one side of a microphone.

I will let myself feel this kind of beautiful

every day.

Never write a poem when you have serious heartburn.

Day 11

My heart won’t fall apart for you. 

no tearing

no shredding

no crack in this wall but

Everything hurts.

You 

have set fire to all of my thoughts

and torched my brain into believing only in you

I didn’t know that 

heatrbreak caused my

heartburn but now

You are branded into me.

Day 10

For Kika
happy birthday, wonderful girl.


I do not believe in permanent separation. After all,
we are constantly in motion. Our lives are
pendulums swinging beneath clock hands,
the circular path of a planet in orbit,
tides washing and drying and
washing and
drying,
Our friendship is nature's strongest poem.
No matter the months eroding our canyon walls or
the states filling the rift between us,

There are six degrees of separation between everyone
so the man next to me in the airport knows you better than I do,
I pretend I am talking to you.

I look for you at a crowded poetry slam,
waiting until someone else fills the seat
I wanted to be yours.

Find me nestled under ukulele strings,
a random page in your favorite notebook,
When the gavel in your stomach bangs a little too loudly,

find me in food.
Calories are just the energy it takes to start a fire and
One day, your heart will be ablaze. Find me
in the moment before the flame.

Day 9

People still ask me if I write my own poems.
If my voice box has gift wrapped someone else's words,
If I am giving sound to a deaf child or
extracting a gold tooth or
sealing a crack in the Liberty Bell.
I do none of these things.
I am filling the space between wind chimes
with a breeze, I am composing this music
myself. So
Yes, these are my poems.
I made them to love me a little more.
These are the friends my fingers fashioned from their own nerve endings.
I made them to put a metaphor to madness.
This is my story
This is my heartbeat measured in pages of poetry,
This is how I built a house with no windows.
how I scream the darkness onto paper instead of at friends,
how I hate so hard I bleed alphabets into my notebook
This is my heartbeat measured in how many times
I've loved myself enough
to write something
worth sharing.



 

Day 7

Sorry, I wrote one yesterday but didn't post it. This is what I wrote today.


When the girl on your swim team turns benign homophobia into a Facebook art form, scream your cheekbones bloody in rebellion,
let your faith in her bleed itself out of you,
bind her betrayal into pages of poetry.
It is the only way you'll remember without shattering your trust on the sidewalk
over
and
over
and
over again.

My girl, my poet,
my hero,
myself,
do this for us.
Remember that you are love in kaleidoscope
You are most beautiful when you are shaken.

Day 4 (and 5)

Day 4
when you left, he spoke only in metaphors,
when you left, he told me he was drawing maps to you,
when you left,
I wondered where his compass heart would point.
Roaming girl,
you are the wildest path through the forest.

Update: continued from Day 4

(Day 5)
when he knew you were leaving,
he confessed to faulty cartography and tried again, topographically this time.
he mapped out your mountaintops,
reset the scale to account for the distance between your heart and his
When you left,
he realized how thin the air was at this altitude.

Day 3

The Yellowstone Caldera

Half a million years ago, a volcano loved the world too much.
Her attraction covered the continent in 250 miles of volcanic ash
and turned magma into mountains.

For awhile, she was hiding.
Caldera settled miles underneath us,
suppressing underground sobs,
striving for salvation
and slowly seeking sunlight for the second time.

-

Lately, she's been sprinting upward,
climbing three inches each year in search of the sun,

Scientists say Caldera will see surface again.

Not today.


Not tomorrow.


Her ancient scalp will scratch the surface in a thousand years.

Hers is a prolonged arrival,
fashioned across centuries,
Caldera will embrace our atmosphere
like coming home.
the earth will be singing,

shaking,

sobbing,

stunned at her reckless return.

She will greet us with Leviathan love and a landslide of lava,
her joy coating our lungs with the dust from her lips.
We will asphyxiate from her affection.

Caldera's kiss will be our last.

30 Poems, 30 Days

Happy National Poetry Month, everybody! I'll be writing one poem a day this month. Hopefully I'll remember to post what I've written.

April 1

When the boy you loved too much asks for your darkness, do not laugh.

Tell him you plucked your heart from prescription pill bottles,

filled the hole in your lungs with a therapist’s armchair.

When he asks how to care for the nighttime, answer in astronomy.

consider telling him that midnight’s speckled shimmers are better antidotes to depression 

than bright blue daytimes.

Teach him to chart his own constellations,

see Jupiter reflected in his pupils,

increase your distance and watch him from telescopes.

When this comet of a boy enters your orbit again,

do not spoon feed him sunlight.

Show him the stars.

April 2
forgive stomach symphonies
in empty lunchrooms
swallow your shame