you can’t leave a mirror

the first time you really see your reflection

realness,
alive in awe and echo and everything you are.

you can’t fly away from a fire
that flies you forward like
fruit flies towards tangerine
you are light like
love that
kaleidoscope kisses you kindly and
kicks you kindly like a kite
in a climate it was never prepared for
(but learned how to live in ‘cause it learned how to lean in
to the tumble and the tilt of it all).
it did so out of a willingness to survive thrive.

I will do you like that
& you do me like that,
I know
that sometimes I have impossible standards
in my head
I think that no one’s hands will ever be hearty enough
to hold all of my wild
in a way that doesn’t feel like wound
and worry.
I know
humans can’t hide in homes of other humans
I know
when my brain does this dichotomous dance called
“no one is good enough for me
not even me,”

I try to remember to show it my own hands
now,
there are but two of them.
they can hold so much
but they grasp better when they grasp the idea that
they really can only hold so much
they build better when braided with another pair of them-
one equally hell bent on becoming.

I am hell bent on becoming

love
and I know you
don’t care much for birthdays but I bet every damn year
you become more butterfly, boy

and sometimes we don’t ask such insects where they have been.
we are too embarrassed with how together they seem
in tandem with how split we seem (to ourselves)
to want to hear about
their trauma.
but butterfly fossils are fifty-six million years old and If you ain’t think they been through some shit you are tripping.

so
I will ask you if you have been through some shit
and I will ask you if you wanna get into some shit
and I will try to see all of your structural coloration

(Noun: the scientific reason
butterfly wings look iridescent when their pigments
aren’t actually that vibrant.
when the different microscopic shapes are
stacked upon each other just right
they reflect wonder with light)

for what it is and what I perceive it to be

you reflect wonder with light,
love.
you are a high caliber hand-crafted mirror,
full color kaleidoscope kite
fresh brew butterfly
are drizzled in dew
drop dancing in the sky line,
cupped in a consideration cup caterpillar
we are coiled
into a constant feedback loop
where we both do our best to try never to take without tidying up after ourselves.

Cramped in the corners of my crisising cranium,
I cringe,
I creak,
I forget my own value again,
forget 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 divorcing my dark parts from the rest of me-
but to color match them instead,
to meet them where they’re at.
(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 womanhood 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-
cut me off
to keep me on track.
I am a train who does not know her own trajectory
sometimes
or 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.

while the world continues to prove it is on fire,

while the budgets get slashed
and those with the most privilege
try to tell us what we should care about
i want to remind you that a room of scholars
coined a class ground rule that
we will never call the president
by his first and last name.they call him Donald Duck,
they call him Tronald Dump,
and we laugh and make our own light
because there is nothing else to do right now

but to build and build in the face of destroy
but to live in the name of community
in the names of ourselves
in the names of them.

On teaching a relatively young dog (who is the oldest she has ever been in her defense) new tricks:

I’m always thinking about Sundays

about 11:59 pm
about things ending
about time
and how it’s just a social construct
and how even if it is just a social construct
it’s still totally tripping me up
all the damn
time.

I’ve got a handful of plans about everything
(at any given instance)
and I can easily flow chart my way
through the pros and cons of doing each one of them.
(but who knows if I’ll actually do any of them-
I mean fully,)
I write to do lists so I don’t have to do them and
I make my coffee an entire day before I need it
sometimes I just plan so I don’t have to do
and sometimes I just do so I don’t have to plan.
this is how I escape myself-
so that I won’t realize I’m hurt when other people escape me
after I have led them to the trap door and said “please escape me.”
this is how I evade real love
and then claim myself unloveable
by being “too busy” for it
by listening to my half-truth heart,
my bully brain,
my thickest thoughts,
my abandonment issues saying things like
“yeah I heard so and so say that extra nice thing to you
but they can’t mean it.
It’s cute you still think shit will work out.”
I have a hard time separating the parts of me that think shit will work out
and the ones that are already throwing a funeral for our feelings.
I didn’t want to be cold but
I felt myself love you like a Philadelphian snow storm
saw you praying for some semblance of predictability
of accurate forecast
Yes, I always thought the X-men were cool.
No, I didn’t want to grow up to be a storm.
Now I’m tracking my weather patterns
but it might be too late.
The collateral damage already accumulated as
you made me face every one of my demons without an alter ego,
without a mask on,
and I’m not a superhero

but I sure have my fair share of kryptonite.
This isn’t your fault
but this is why I ran away.
I don’t look good in a cape of self-sewn shame but
I can’t stop wearing it sometimes and
and I don’t take well to criticism
(even the constructive kind)
sometimes.
I often think praise feels ingenuine
like, “you’ve got the wrong one.”
’cause the parts of me that completely love myself are completely there
but they have been carved only in recent history
the etchings are still so fresh sometimes
they don’t feel deep enough for me to recognize them
I’m trying to feel them
I’m trying to feel
I’m trying
I

on a Thursday when a student writes a poem and she shows only you

and it says that she is afraid of being herself
and you ask why
and she says it’s personal “like, really personal”
and you say if she wants to tell you, that you would love to know
and she asks why
and you say you care
and she asks why
(because kids are really good at that)
and you say you love her

so then she comes out
(of nowhere)
and comes out
in poetry class
and you realize you might be the first person she ever told
and however you react next
might set her self-image in cement
like maybe it wont but
what if it does and
you’re not even out at work yet yourself,
(you phony.)

and maybe you would’ve been out way sooner and
maybe you wouldn’t have told everyone in your own high school
“like, ew duh no I’m not” if you had met yourself now,
then.

and you think all of this in the four seconds it takes you to read her four sentences and you don’t want to stall
and you don’t want to stutter
and you want to be as real as you can be,
but exactly how real are you even allowed to be
here?

so you look at her sentences,
at her closet door opened, just for you,
and you point and say,
“And you really thought I wouldn’t understand?”
which is honest but vague enough to be professional
by which I mean coward enough to be self-protecting
and you watch her heavy become at least one shade lighter
and you both laugh, together
over something the rest of the room doesn’t even notice.

I am so soft

I make clouds look stable
to be stood on

marshmallows, marble staircases

feathers, full coat armor.

I am a huge-hearted thing.
I have reverse grinch syndrome:
It’s two sizes too big
and I’m too tiny
too flight no fight
too I only look bad on stage-

If you ever have a conversation with me in real life you’d be like,

“seriously? is that all you’ve got?
where’s your eye contact?”
(oh, it’s somewhere hanging out with my innocence. they ran out to the store to get some smarties in like 3rd grade and I guess they’re not back yet?)
“where’s your cocky attitude?
did you leave it at home today?”
(…well, it’s sort of a rental….)
“are you tired?”
(yeah, usually)
“…nervous?”
(yeah, usually.)

more lamb than lion
more sheep than slaughter.

I am only up here
because my brain says
talk about it or I won’t stop talking to you and
my heart says it is sick of me breaking myself
like the piggy bank I never had
because I can’t save money any better
than I can save my sappiness
from seeping into absolutely everything
I do.

If I had a dollar

for every time someone put me atop a pedestal I didn’t ask to

definitely don’t deserve to be on
I would have enough money to buy each of those people a mirror the size of their insecurities.
one that would show them what they actually look like.
how striking they actually are-
one like that which covers my walls and ceilings
like my doubt does on my dimmer moments.
all day kids ask me for advice
but I’m not even everything I want to be when I grow up yet
I’m just trying to let my goals scare me in a
“watch out world, I’m here” kind of shake you
not take the wind out of you before you start to run
not “this race is too long I’m not going to run”
kind of defeat you.
I think you are a mountain range
and I tried to tell you every night
but maybe we never spoke the same language.
sometimes I sounded like white noise
when I meant to sound like soul.
and look, Google translate only gets you so far
before your hands defy science and get headaches
or maybe I just cannot speak louder than your uncertainty and certainly
we can only lay so much cement on each other
’s self-doubt seared sidewalks
before our shoes are stuck.
I never meant to make you second guess your self-worth
every time you tell me I make you feel tea light
make you feel
travel size
make you feel small in any way,
I am your partner in miniaturized crime
and we are both way too starscape for all of that
so this has been a nice vacation but I have to go now
we’ll both add ‘love yourself’ to our respective to-do lists
‘cause I know you can barely read my handwriting
and you’d remember it better if you wrote it yourself.
so,
Why do you build me up, buttercup baby
just to let you down
and mess us around?
and then worst of
all,
you never call baby when you say you will-
fuck if I need you still
don’t need you
don’t need anyone darlin’
been reclaiming those parts of my heart
so build you up buttercup or break your own heart.

I don’t know the last time I lived in a cage that didn’t rattle

or a body that didn’t feel like a cage
I mean, this is my home but my armor feels like
I mean my skin feels like
that fifteen seconds of terror when I misplace my keys
sometimes feels like
movie marathons in folding chairs sometimes
like I really need to get up and be anywhere else but here right now
and so I’ve never really came home to something
that-
actually I can end that sentence right there-
I’ve never really came home to something.
because my body as mine is a political debate
is a perceived playground or kiddie pool by boys who never grew into men
so now my body as mine feels like a damn fairy tale
and I was once in a fairy tale
skipping through the forest in a cape the color of my blood until I met my first wolf
or my second or my
now every hug that lasts even a second too long feels like false security
like your best friend’s bedroom
like that “nice guys” bedroom
like the choir of ‘why’d you even come home with me then?’s
or ‘I could tell you weren’t into it but….’
that sing until there is no such thing as a safe space
it’s all just space
so I’m sorry I’ve been putting that between us
‘cause you seem nice but
they say “a gentleman is a patient wolf”
and I’ve already shook the hands of my fair share,
felt them nipping, gnawing
so now you don’t even have to huff and puff to blow me down
anymore.
in the airport they teach you not to let anyone touch your luggage
but I didn’t pack this baggage by myself
and sometimes I have trouble unpacking it alone
but it’s hard for me to trust you to do it when
so many others were just breaking and entering
didn’t realize they were breaking when they were entering
so I am a garden now, yes but I learned a damn long time ago
that even roses have thorns
so I grew my own
and when that wasn’t enough, I strung up the sirens
so no I never thought I’d be a security system when I grew up
never thought I’d be a cage until I got surrounded with sharks
and they said swim at your own risk
said live at your own risk
said it was my fault for wanting to go swimming in the first place.

either/or, or some combination thereof

I. I will be a gallery you have never gone to.
for hours on end you will gaze at me
and I will repeatedly reinvent your idea of beauty.
then, one day,
I will speak to the ingredients in my paint –
to the chemicals I can’t pronounce but am perpetually learning
how to use without poisoning anyone,
to the things that make me me.
I will do so with intent to inform not overwhelm
but maybe you won’t want or know how to soak in what I am saying.
maybe it will sound too much like your shadows
or your exes
or a movie you saw one time that you really don’t want to see again.
you will be holding my thigh at the time,
and you will release your hand by millimeters and I will notice your shrinking.
It will make me recoil in return.

II. I will admire your brush strokes.
for weeks on end I will stare at you
and I will sing nothing but your subtle gradient scale.
then, one day,
I will speak to the ingredients in your paint-
to the lead and then to the chips and the cracks too.
I will do so largely to be suspenders
(or thumbtacks
or anything else that holds you up
the way you’ve always wanted to be held)
but sometimes you won’t want to hear all of that.
sometimes,
it will sound too much like the choir
of those who have entered your life before me
and maybe hinted at the things I am hinting at
but in a way that made you feel hard to love-
so now you associate that with me and
I will not be thinking you are hard to love
but your brain might trick you
into thinking that I’m thinking this
(which is almost the same thing or at least plays out the same way.)
and I know
I can be really real in a world where reality
is just another kind of TV show
and so my real feels too real really
and my honest honestly too honest.
I won’t sugarcoat anything.
there will be no artificial sweetener and
you will be used to high-fructose syrup at this point so
my sweet won’t taste sweet enough.
you’ll want something else but you will still want me
but I am not so good at stunt doubling myself.
I’ll want to stay around
but the suspenders only work when you put them on and
the envelope only closes when you lick it.