This week, my body releases less-

less Christmas light,
less cotton candy chemicals,
less whatever science calls the shit makes me smile
an hour wide for two weeks until there is nothing
but now.
There is nothing
now,
my lips, a tightrope, so good at their job-
they never bow.
This is my personal science.
It doesn’t feel good so I try to think of a situation
where it would,
where it may be more fitting for my flat lining.

I briefly imagine myself to be a boy
or something else that doesn’t get told to smile so much
and actually for a second it’s nice
to have permission to exist without emotions that benefit onlookers.

In fact, it is so nice
that I smile big enough
to blind the bullshit
for at least three minutes
which feels like an accomplishment
until it doesn’t
and I’m here haunting my own house like I ain’t got shit to lose or shit to do.
I’m here, making less sense
to boys, especially.

The boy I like leaves me

again
because of this but does not say it is because of this,
does not say that he is a dictionary who has run out of words to soothe me,
and run out of time to invent new ones.
I know some days I am an entire sunflower field and sometimes I am a singular and half-blossomed thing,
so wilted the glance is not what you expected it to be but I swear I water myself every day.
Some days, it just takes better than others and
some days I think about all the fields my former lovers have left to grow in,
thoughts about their growth take the place of pruning my own leaves.
I am no gardener but I am working on tending my soil.

This is how we human:

I. build homes of others until we realize how this does not serve us.
II. construct shaky foundations born out of a lack of survival skills.
III. forget to forgive ourselves for not learning the aforementioned survival skills sooner.
IV. learn that roofs above our own heads come first.
V. forgive and get on with it.

Are you bored?

Do you wish you looked more like how you do in your dreams or how you did in your childhood visions of your full-grown self? Do you need someone to hear your thoughts and smile at them from time to time so that you know you’re a real boy? Boy, do I have something for you! Introducing, the relationship!

The relationship is the perfect accessory for the man that has everything!
Get yourself a dime piece to try

and forget the sound

of your mother’s disapproval,
or the way the world keeps forgetting to say good job when you do shit!
Score a bad bitch in attempts to disremember how bad you were to other bitches cause, “this ones different, man.”
Land a babe and if she isn’t, “different, man,” call her crazy to anyone that will listen and then swiftly find her replacement.
The relationship seems to be the perfect accessory for the man who has everything except for an understanding of his own intentions and emotions.

Relationships are the fastest sinking kind of ships when you board them for the wrong reasons.
If you don’t like boats, you probably shouldn’t be on one in the first place.
If you need validation, buy a mirror not a girl dinner
and if you’d like to hear laughter turn on any comedy special.
I am not your comedy special.
I am just strong person, strong current.
Sometimes dating feels like swimming
in a sea of subtle messages that I should be less,
like I could be harmony maybe but never lead
& I always push back on that
and then I’m falling
out of love which feels more like drowning then anything else I can think of.

I don’t mean to sound like an expert.
I am not one of those either
but I do fall in love like a professional,
like I’m getting paid for it
but often I’m the one paying for it
often it’s with boys that put me somewhere over……………..here.
like I’m the sweetest damn set decoration they ever did see.
I don’t need to be spotlight center stage but I sure am not
stuffed behind set,
sure am not prop and don’t have any idea how to act like one.
Guess the trouble is I go off script.
I forget my lines like:
“Yes sir” like “Whatever you want, baby” like “It’s no trouble”
Trouble is make too much noise.
He see me as bulldozer but I won’t bury my opinions
and I have a lot of them.
I love and learn in the currency of question.
I cry a queendom of tears for at least a week a month.
I feel and worry deeply.
I am beginning to understand the depths of which none of this is preferred.
Fortunately, I do not exist to be a preference,
to sit idol,
to decorate,
to accent.
If I am to be art,
I will be alive.
I will be loud
and I will be very much
here.

There will be times where your gentle does not make sense to them.

Be soft anyways.
When they don’t see you as Phoenix,
when they just see you as ash,
when your tears are floodgates you wish you would’ve learned how to operate ages ago and you can’t stop spitting “I’m sorry”s
like sunflower seed shells.

There will be entire decades that you apologize for yourself for a living.

Then you will change professions.

So I heard that poets are attention seeking: 

Of freaking course I’m attention seeking.
I exist, don’t I?
Sometimes I need reminders I exist, don’t I?
Look,
I’m not mirage nor magician
but I sure am real great at disappearing.
At moving in minimize-
at speaking in silence,
in cemetery
because I long ago buried my voice
every time my mother spoke over me
I struck the dirt harder until I was so covered in soot I was somewhere secret even from myself.
So I’m pretty great at that now,
at not seeing myself or hearing my holy

my holy
is in a language I keep forgetting

the words to.

I never really learned them anyways
never quite could call myself clean.
they didn’t offer that course in my college.
they didn’t offer that course in my childhood.
so instead I mastered worry 101,
several seminars in self-loathing and advanced emotional outbursts for practitioners.
Thankfully I found poetry but let us remember that writing sounds like writhing and maybe that isn’t accident after all.

‘Cause to write this poem I ripped out my nervous system
and made it front page news.
“Extra extra: bleed all about it.”
I graffiti stained a billboard in my own blood which felt like the first time I realized sacrifice and Cyn
have been synonyms for 28 years now.
Every time I acted selfishly it was because I wasn’t putting the word self top shelf or anywhere besides the back burner.
This is not excuse but context.
This is a how to manual on how to handle me.
I think I wrote it for you-
I mean I think I wrote it for me.
I feel guilty for writing it at all.
guilty for taking up space all the time
trying to stop feeling guilty for taking up space all the time
Cause the several years of self-silencing and shrinking did not work

nor the eating disorder
nor the hours of hesitation involved in hanging up my jacket born of unending worry about being in the way,
but split, still,
because the more I segment,
the more I shed and the less I am
and I love that
the more I am able to be in two places at once
the less I am to any one thing.

I am learning

everyone likes to be reminded they deserve to be here, even me.
And I have to like my jokes without a laugh track in the background.
I am not mirage nor magician but I am great at disappearing but that sure doesn’t mean I have to.
If I know one thing,
it is that I don’t need to abracadabra myself into non-existence for the ease of others
anymore.

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a thing with limbs

that wakes worried and walks woeful
rolls in after half a months absence
then melts me millimeter by millimeter to my mattress to make sure I know
just how flat I am.
It tried to get me to stay home today
to put my mouth on mute today
It tells me this poem is bullshit, anyway.
then makes meal of me:
dissolving my dignity
grinding my greatness into gristle
and expecting gratitude in return.
I know who I am
(most days)
but on the ones that I don’t
I really really don’t.
and I guess that’s just part of it.
Part of having a heart so hearty
so huge, so human
it feels five times bigger than it means to
and it can be mean, too
I can be mean too but I don’t mean to
it’s usually just my torment talking
out its ass again
it’s usually just me, cramped
into the corners of my crisising cranium
cringing
creaking
forgetting my own value again,
forgetting my own name again.
There are fifteen days of every month that I am not myself
and therefore
I am still myself but a part of me I prefer not to present,
presently
I am learning to stop separating my sharp spots from the sum of me
but to color match them instead,
to meet them where they are
(they may not pay rent but they still live here).
I still am here.
this has been a life’s work.
this has been my work.
this has been what being in my body means to me.
this is learning to love myself at nearly three decades young.
this is you watching me
as I crush my crooked into crisp
into crystal,
into christmas morning.
this is me wishing you would tell me
I am not too much
while I am telling you endless
reasons why I am way too much-
I am a train who does not know her own trajectory
sometimes
feels like she needs you to cut her off to keep her on track sometimes
can’t recognize the weight of her worth sometimes.
so I sit here trying to trace my tremors
to traverse my trite
and my tragic.
I do not call it beautiful.
I do not wish you to call it beautiful.
let us not romanticize this
but let us not run from it,
either.

Congratulations!

You’ve won a some expenses paid trip to the land of adulthood-
lifetime supply of responsibility, reflection and potential redemption included.
peace of mind sold separately.

sense of purpose and self sold separately.

patience sold separately.

most everything sold separately.

some assembly required.
(or a lot of assembly required)
level of assembly required dependent on level of privilege.

level of expense dependent on level of privilege.
most things dependent on level of privilege.
recognizing your privilege not required for travel
unfuckingfortunately.
recognizing your privilege  is however required for being a decent person.
trip doesn’t require decency.
nothing really requires decency.
this is capitalist adulthood after all.
restrictions may apply.
see self for details.

today i am grateful to have a skeleton

that feels brave enough
to speak up to me when i am treating it unkindly
and thankful that i am privileged enough to answer his call.

today i am working through a thesis
about building structures to support my students
with heavy hands that feel
hot gravel graced each time i click
clack
a letter on my keyboard
but i can’t even complain because i got a keyboard
to click clack on,
you know?

today i write about chronic poverty
read: chronic white heroism
read: chronic hegemony
read: chronic white supremacy
recently diagnosed with a chronic illness
but my cultural capital allows me in this body
to receive medicine and comprehensive treatment
and sick days
which i am using to write this
down

today
i write about trauma
while unpacking my own every week
at the rate of one hundred dollars an hour-
cash or check only
but i can do that because that’s my quote on quote
“Fun Money”
i was taught to save for because my kin folk had those
resources and taught me how to navigate their narrows

today i know that there are a lot of things i don’t know
but

who i am is what i do
who you are is what you do
and these things cannot be separated.

build as if your hands don’t shake

every time you pick up
a pen
like you could really
wield something
as weighty as

war time depression
as if
the fact that we’ve been in war time for
decades doesn’t matter to you
build like you need somewhere to live like
what good are my bones if I forget how strong they are?
if I keep leaving them vacant
in exchange for time spent in yours
are they ever
really mine?

am i ever really mine?