I Try To Unwrite It

Sometimes I reread the poems I wrote for past lovers and feel like… this was too good for them. I try to take it back

Too tender. Too raw. Too sacred.

Bitterness shows up first.

Memory comes next. 

With it the soft ache of truth.

I remember why I wrote it, the little universe we lived in for a while. 

And I remember.

I remember it was theirs. Because a version of me meant it.

Even if they didn’t deserve the whole poem forever.

Some things are real just because they happened.

And some people get lucky enough to be written about.

The love was real, so was the poem.

So I give it back.

Nest of Sorrow

I just sit in my nest.
And wail and cry and sob.
I’m fragile and I delight in explosion.
At the edge of grief
I’m swallowed by it whole.

— from Repetitions of Ruin  
(incantations from the same wound)

Bug On A Wall

“Bug on a wall, doe eyed, pressed to a window, steamed and well, comfortable..

I handled the last storm.

I’ve been meeting people who look like me again. I must admit I’m timid and shy to approach..”

Funny

Laughing hyenas have misunderstandings and particular landings

As the way that I move

It’s too smooth you say

Much too runny

Masked in funny

An instrument for disaster

Their hidden laughter

Wades

Through the Carnivora 

Beyond the many wishes

So I beg to land in forgiveness

To set in stone my sins to flesh and

Move from what’s told to win again

Possessive Eclipse

What will linger when I’m gone
If time erases everything
Are some things meant to stay
I wanna leave an imprint
You’d try to forget me
But where will you ever find a ghost as haunting?
Stitched beneath your skin
A whisper in the bones

Haunting

Smokey listeners

Reaching for the shallow limbs of black

They sink and wail to discover life

And so I remain, printed and somewhat flaky 

Together, forested in fictions

I lie to myself when I stretch out of the hopeful comforts

I’m picked as bark

The dog days are quite holy; haunting 

The body was muddy and dug out of void

Being, holy as well

Peer through 

Identify me, then leave me to be, leave me alone

As I grow feral to the moans of cicadas 

I will touch the golden skies in faith

The ones I indulge in and tell stories about

Black Sheep

I can go anywhere and find home on my skin
Resting in dew
What’s new
When strangers are blue
Sketched and watercolored onto blocks
I’m an iridescent rock with moss
I wrap my locs when I’m around em
Pretend I’m Medusa, not a bit hesitant
And my shadows vow to move exactly how I move
As I pretend to blend in as if I belonged here
I dodge small talk
I know real voices, true hearts
I’ve mastered how to mirror; starting over less foreign than I
I knew I was alright
I was a locust bite, bitter
In the cool hybrid air
I made my way through the stolen
What I gave away could never keep up
My gift was melted and sculpted
Sometimes I’d call it love

Lifted

Hovering by my bedside

With some lips that tucked me in

Nothing special to keep us up all night

We made sure when we’re together we’re lifted

Laying in the hard bed

I snuggle myself stiffly in this bed I have made
It makes my backbone strong and my spine thicken
In solitude my baby gets scared
My baby sees distorted realities and hears her past
Blue Jays in the winter
Those years had their intentions on healing
Not knowing that flowers need sunshine to grow
Solitude doesn’t know
My babies crying, her tears won’t work
My head’s on solitude