I Think That If You Were To Melt

I think that if you were to melt

You’d melt like sugar

Sticky-sweet

Molten—golden; 

Flaking on my lips and fingers

You’d melt like ice cream

Slow dribbling spilling seeping 

Brimming over the goblet

White wine (not red) 

seductively sweet

You’d melt like honey pouring 

Viscous and luminous 

Like your eyes in the sun 

Ah—the sun! 

The light—your light—

Your warmth like the sun

Like apricity—

Like sunbursts after the tempest

Golden sunshine spilling over

Like warm hands cradling me 

you touch me and

I’m burning

melting

for you.

Oh, darling—

You have been hurting 

For a very long time. 

I am sorry that you have spent your life

Saying “I’m sorry” for others

I’m sorry you’ve spent your life 

Feeling like you need to be more palatable

To be perfect for others 

Because you can’t be perfect for yourself.

Because you don’t want to be a waste of space

Because to be unproductive is to be useless

Oh, darling—

You have been hurting 

For a very long time

Haven’t you? 

You want to hold the world because it is beautiful

But you are too loud, too demanding, too much. 

they try to drown you because you are beautiful

For living unapologetically. 

Oh, darling—

You do not need to be less loud 

Less hopeful

Less perfect. 

You have been grieving the loss 

of the beautiful world

Because they have tried to drown you. 

Oh, darling—

You are not too much

But just enough.

Because you’re beautiful for living as you are

And perfect for loving the world as you do.

You have been hurting 

for a very long time

You have so much love to give—

So let others love you too. 

You have always

Been good enough. 

Right Here, Right Now

TW: mentions of suicide, self harm

What if, right here, right now, 

I just jumped from off this roof? 

What if, right here, right now, 

I took this gun?—for no one’s bulletproof. 

What if, right here, right now, 

I took this rope and let me swing? 

What if, right here, right now, 

I took those pills? These tiny things? 

Coward, you screamed—coward, coward

Never did anything right

Always failed, always disappointed

So what if I gave into the night? 

What if, right here, right now, 

I took this knife, right at that vein 

Slashed ‘til I found blood and bone

And let thick crimson liquid rain? 

So slit my throat. Slit my arms. 

Slice this traitorous heart of mine. 

Carve these words into my chest. 

Smile and say that everything’s fine. 

Cut these thoughts. Cut these hands. 

Cut the voices inside my head. 

Ignorance is bliss—and so’s oblivion

‘Cause nothing can hurt me if I’m dead. 

little white lies

Sometimes I wonder if I’m an awful person

No—I am an awful person; I

Tell myself I’m an awful person—my

Parents tell me I’m an awful person 

My friends tell me to get therapy, but

Everybody around away from me—I

Draw in those around me, then

Burn bridges—I need therapy

Lie, lie, lie; just a white lie 

I’m digging myself deeper and deeper 

Lie, lie, lie; oops, another lie

Why does everybody think the best about me? 

Play dumb, sweet smile, sugared compliments

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it

So bad everybody thinks I’m good

A masquerade, this charade just keeps going

Let’s play a game, just you and me

Let’s see which fake personality

I’ve chosen to paint myself

Which one is it gonna be?

Lie, lie, lie; just a white lie

I’m trapped in this web I can’t defeat

Lie, lie, lie; oops, another lie

I keep spinning these threads of deceit

Caught in this carousel of illusion—I’m 

Suffocating in delusion—I

Crave the taste of authenticity—but

Truth’s a double edged sword, you see

My world’s unraveling, catastrophe 

Unraveling just like my sanity

Looked into a mirror that fed my vanity

But guess that now that’s gone to insanity

spring dawn

You’re the snowdrop that delicately lifts 

Its head up from the melting snow—

The way first blades of grass push up

through the blanketed plateau. 

You’re the shy and rosy blush 

Of the briar’d, waxen rose; 

The golden warmth of apricity

and the hopping, playful crows. 

You’re the soft and dew-touched hush 

Of the leaves after the rain—

The deep bellow of white-winged geese 

Heading home—home—again. 

You’re the fragile, dainty dance 

Of the young and prancing fawn; 

The dappled light of komorebi 

From the slow rising of spring dawn. 

how to tell a story

How does one tell a true story? 

My poetry is not true. 

They are half-truths I decorate in flowers and sugar. They are little lies that I rip apart and chew and swallow and smile with blood stained teeth and say: look. I am an artist. I give you my heart and I chop it into fine pieces so it is palatable for you. I tear the flesh from my bones and devour it and spill my entrails upon the floor and make my carcass into art. Look at me and praise my pain. 

I say: I am a poet. 

This is a lie. 

I am not a poet. I am a broken human being who spills ink and blood upon pages. I am a thief who steals all the pain from others and take it for myself so that I may sing about my grief. I am not a poet. 

I say: I am a poet. 

This is a truth. 

I grasp at words and lay them upon my tongue and savor the taste of honey and decay. I spit them upon the page and create art. The words says what my voice cannot. 

I say: she was searching for home. 

I do not say: she would never find it. 

I say: the bloodied sheets pooled around her like snow around a dead bird and she wondered if she was dying. 

I do not say: society told her that she was a woman now and her body was no longer hers. 

I say: she was a soft down-feathered bird, fluttering her feathers, singing so sweetly.

I do not say: they’d broken her wings. They’d torn them off of her and flung them into the air. They said it would heal. It did. Her flesh forgot the wrongs they’d committed. Her heart did not. 

I say: she was an angel. 

I do not say: she had sinned too much to ever fly again. 

(I ask: But what is sin? 

They answer: the antonym to purity. You are not pure. You are dirty, dirty, dirty. You are tainted and evil and sinning. You have turned your back to God.

God? I ask. Plaintive. Pleading. Pathetic. Who is God? Why have I been condemned? 

There is no answer.) 

I say: God is real. 

This is a lie. 

I do not believe in a higher being. I have seen too much to look up at the heavens and say that someone watches over me, cradles me, guards me, loves me. The pain does not make me a better person, make me more whole, make me more good. It does not teach me to value what I have. It does not make me more beautiful. Fuck that. I make myself beautiful. 

I say: God is real. 

This is a truth. 

It is a truth when I look at you. 

It is a truth when I am on my knees begging—I love you I’ll serve you I’ll do anything for you because maybe if I beg for your love as I do a god then you will not leave me and you will not hate me and you will smile at me and say that I am good enough. 

It is a truth when I pick up the pen and write. 

It is a truth when I write about love and sweet kisses and fate and destiny and you. 

I say: I love you. 

This is a lie. 

You do not exist. You are some distant wish in my head for love and companionship. You are some shapeless dream of a perfect partner, of a perfect kind of love. 

I say: I love you. 

This is a truth. 

I love the idea of you. I love the idea that love exists. I love the idea of sneaking kisses, of stealing your scarf in autumn, of waking up in your arms, of soft dometistic love. I love that somewhere out there, you exist, and you are not perfect, you are not heavenly, you are not the most beautiful creature to grace this planet—but you are you and I love you. 

I say: let me tell you a story.

I say: this is all true. 

I say: this is all a lie. 

I say: that does not mean it is not real. 

I say: truth is a semi-permeable membrane. 

I say: this is how to tell a story.