My Patterns.

The year I realized
I didn’t want to cheapen anything
about myself anymore than I have
talking about things nobody understands
Nobody really wants to hear about
how desperate you are to leave this town
and how it has sucked the life out of you
And that was the year I stopped posting statuses on Facebook
and stopped asking for attention
even though I never stopped craving it
I never talked about my sickness
or how unhappy I am
how much I love my mother
how much I try to break my patterns
how much my scars have started to define me
even if you cannot see them
And people started forgetting me
forgetting me like I begged them to
like I was asking for it
and I suppose I am
So I bury my honesty like bodies in the ground
and lie through my teeth
just because I didn’t want to cheapen anything
but this is how it all began
I can’t seem to break my patterns

People We Know.

A penny for your little toe
sliding down my foot
Stormy weather for your sighs
and the ceiling’s weighing in
It will smell like herbs and rain
and sometimes sunshine but these old tiles
once been new tiles
We’ve once been new people
born the day we met and the born every day since

The white of your eyes
are an exact measurement to your expressions
When they line red, mine follow
and we breathe like we are the wind
Air rushing and forceful
we are the weight
of the world

And I don’t think they understand
when they say things like
“You mean the world to me”
You mean the world to me like
you are big enough and small enough
to fill the sea and the land
the small figures who live and breathe
who sleep and eat and sit in chairs
stand in stalls, who sweats and yells
cries and suffers, laughs and dies
Like the trees that sway, quiet and falling
things that stay a thousand years
and you are the food in my mouth
the song in my ears
the thoughts in my head
the love in my heart

The people we know fade into the big, wide galaxy
we know nothing about
we conjecture about
we make up facts and tell stories about
But if we have loved them, we love them
we love them, sent of in spaceships, thousands of light years away
to see dying stars
but we love them

Poppy Seeds.

There is a child narrator telling my story
and she begins it with a snake picking at its skin
that swallowed darkness whole,
venom dripping in its mouth.

It says to a little girl, hisses,
“What are you so afraid of?”
and it slithers between rooms,
creating fears and devouring them.

In this house, demons grew and vanquished
in the joints of time with baking cakes, the smell of butter,
the sound of the piano, bang bang banging away,
the books thrown against walls and echoes of old arguments,
and the snake swallowing itself
until I am stuck with the same fears
and no warrior.

I found a packet of poppy seeds in the bakery store
and my friend asked me, “Aren’t they made into drugs?”
I tell her it is different and that I love them in my mouth
so she laughs and says I am addicted,
and I think of red and orange, fire and explosions in my mouth,
and think, yes, that is my drug.

24/04.

ten hours and i still smell like chai
the rain pours and kills the seeds i planted
two days ago
my mother says she saw him
almost run over a cat this morning
so i text him and ask him over but
we intersect and go our separate ways
we are not parallel or right angled
we are just curves, graphs of functions
up and down, meeting, leaving
never staying

what is family? Mr. Paul asks
and what makes a family?
my mouth tastes of sugar and my hands
carry the scent of vanilla
but my tears are bitter churnings in my chest
and my eager ears are learning
i just hope my heart is too
because father doesn’t love me like he should
and mother never held me like she could
but Mr. Paul says this is us
it is you
it is me
i will do it right

an article i read says
frozen’s most cynical twist
is the one that shot an arrow right through me
when Prince Hans says
oh, Anna, if only there were someone who loved you
and even though the boys in my life
are not rotten to the care
who is to say that they do not change their minds

i am brave
i tell myself again
i am brave
because i have been calling myself a coward
for months and months on end
but i am brave, yes, i am

Dry.

I try to hide behind loud music
playing about happy things
and I bang on my piano keys
after four years of a hiatus
And I read book after book
and watch comedies
and I am again trying to talk about things to people
but it’s not working
And the harder I try
the worse it gets
So I play louder music
and hit the piano keys with more speed
spiraling out of control
and I go through five books a week
an finish so many TV series
and I talk and I talk and my mouth is dry
My mouth is dry and my heart is dry

The Sidewalk Carpenter #2.

I find solace in
pretending I could die
But guns are hard to come by
in this place and
I want to go out
with a bang
and no space to backtrack
I don’t want to leave a letter
I just want to go
And you won’t want my explanations
You’ll wish I had stayed
But I’m sorry I cannot
I’m sorry but I just want to go

She just wants a bottle mosquito repellent
and it takes me half an hour
to tell her she should use what I do
But she turns me down sideways
and it’s a failure
And a failure is a failure
in my book
and it sends me crying for an hour
because this is what I want
and I have conquered many fears in my life
The dark, the pain,
love and the stage
but I cannot still do this
the same I cannot let go of
my need for approval and my need for
acceptance and my need to become
what you think I am
And this is my inability
to become the sidewalk carpenter
swamping me with fear
crippling me again and again

My mother will tell me it’s okay
but first she will laugh when I cry instead
She has slain half her demons at nearly fifty-one
and she is testament but I am useless
I promised her I am useless, in my head
and she promised me I would be fine
and that she would be kind
But though she loves me, she is callous
as all people are in this world
and I am left to crawl on my belly
because if I do not love myself
who will love me

And this, if I do not accept myself
if I do not think I can
how can I

Father and Daughters.

Poesy will have a grandfather
who was stained in debt
But you tell yourself that
it has to see an end
before she is born
a decade later

Charlie will have a grandfather
who has shed all his pride
in favor of taking her out
to the park and swaying her on swings
in the night

Our children are ours
and we have constructed worlds in our minds for them
before they are even here
with books and security and
love
from bottom to top
every hair down to her little toes

Our husbands will be kind
and we will always have conversations
communication
companion

And we will be better
always better and sometimes worse
but at the root of ourselves
in our belief and our faith
and our conviction
better

Envy.

I envy your happiness
I envy your ability to ignore my texts
and forget I existed
I envy that you can still call me a friend
after a year of estrangement
and feel nothing but warmth
or so I hope
Or maybe you are as I worry you are
that you do not really care for me
and feel obligated to at least answer me
once
until you feel like this is a waste of your time
or you have just let me slip your mind
I envy your voice
and I envy your disposition
I envy your absolute resolution
to be whoever you fucking want to be
I envy your smiles and I envy
your every last breath
that doesn’t come nearly as hard as mine do
in out like punches to my gut
I envy your promises
and your conversations
all your friends
and the ease of your announcements
whereas my pronunciations come like
a child of three learning just to read
to a tutor like me when her parents have not taught her to read
I envy the thought
that you do not think of me
where as I write these poems about my envy

Aging like a Dream.

We all age like a dream
at the age of 19
with no wrinkles on our faces
and nothing making sense
And a dream it is
with the hazy way I walk through
the bad in my sleep
and the good on my feet

I am supposed to be beginning
I am supposed to do Great Things
I am supposed to have conquered the world
by now
I am supposed to be answering to a crowd
when they scream the words I wrote
and I will sing them a song
that was about you and me
I am supposed to be in the pages
of books in hands in hearts in mouths
I am supposed to have met The One
and kissed his face a thousand times

We are
nothing great
Aging like a dream

Glass-half-empty Girl.

“How can you expect more of me
I come from chaos, brought up in tragedy”

I told my mother that
I thought myself useless
long since I was little
And she told me she would send me
to a meditation retreat
if I so wanted to
I needed release

I told her
“I know you have had it bad
long since I was little”
And she cried so hard
I lost my tears
and sent her to bed

I accuse her of many things
of her accusing me the same
And I think I will feel the same
for a very long time
or forever if I die young
for, mum, you see
I’m a glass half empty girl