Last night our kitchen was a confessional
“You’re my entire world” my dad promised me
What if unconditional love isn’t so unconditional?
If only he knows the things that I’ve done
“You were sick. We see that now”
I am sick. I am ashamed.
“You’re not a burden. You light up my life”
But Dad if you only knew
Why can’t I love myself the way you and Mom love me?
“It wasn’t your fault?”
But if I hadn’t been wearing that shirt that day
Or such sheer leggings
I was marked as dirty. I am dirty.
And no, I don’t believe in unconditional love
Life is a playground and I’m on a mood swing
Too high to jump off
I’m elated
Do you see how the tree gleams brightly?
Do you see all those presents underneath?
It’s a week away but I can already smell the scent of ham on
Christmas Eve
Yes this is sure to be an amazing Christmas
So why am I crying? Why am I letting tears roll down my face?
Even the Christmas lights can’t permeate
The darkness in my heart
Something bad will happen
The hospitals calling my name
And then my mom goes to hold me
And the panic slows
I sob into their arms
Tis the Christmas spirit
My legs graze the ground as the mood swing comes to a close
For now
He kept the window open so he could smoke pot and you know
I don’t mind the smell so much
We lie on his loft bed and everytime I pull out my laptop
To get this stupid paper done
He pushes it away like a playful puppy that just wants
Attention
We used to joke the only way I got out of that paper
Was my suicide attempt
It’s the wrong joke
It’s the wrong joke goddamit
You know I slashed my wrists open after our last fight
My mom cried
Why can’t we be in your loft
Where my boobs were your pillows
And your massages were amazing
And we baked me a cake and your mom sang Happy Birthday
Before she became an alcoholic
I’m homesick for you, for us
And I swore to my mom in a poem I wouldn’t write anymore poems about you
You walk with bloody footsteps all over my heart
I told you to get help
I couldn’t, I tried, God knows
How many nights, how many fights when your Mom used me as a weapon
I loved you
I miss you
Guess I’m just homesick
You’re a deep inhale of hookah, my favorite flavor
Sticky kisses exchanged
Now come to the car and keep me warm
You’re starry eyes on November nights
I’d risk the cold
To see your light
You’re a dance I’ve yet to learn
God thrusts me into the center
Tells me its my turn, the dance of love
The two of us can’t dance enough
And he says no one ever reaches perfection
But he’ll give us a lifetime worth of lessons
You are sunflowers on Van Gogh’s desk
Eternal and beautiful, you brighten his room
And you brighten my heart
The flowers that bloom
My brother has a fever of 104 and I am
Hear him screaming as my mom puts him in
An ice bath
She’s on the phone with doctors
I sit in the living room and watch
I only seem to get “low grade fevers”
And while I don’t want an ice bath
I want attention
I sit on a chair swing my legs and went
For the fever to break
We all do
There is always more than one silence
Like blankets layered, waiting to envelope
You, silences ever present like evergreen trees
When I told him “I love you” he said “I can’t
Give you that” When I told him I loved him he
Laughed When I loved him I didn’t tell him
I let the silences do the work, he deciphered
What others could not, some speak silence and some
Are made to enjoy silences together, like the
Whisps of snow falling an ever present evergreens
Someday when I grow up I will love
A cactus and a cat
And large windows that let in the sun
And a husband but that requires a lot of maintenance
And faith
And compromise
But when he holds my kitten, giving her gentle scratches
Behind the ears
Or attends to my cactus gently probing its needles to see how sharp they really are
When I see the sun stream over his face as he hands me a morning cup of coffee
I forget the maintenance, the compromise
There is only faith
To where shall I cry?
I want to venture beyond the folds of
My streets, I don’t want a tear stained pillow
Do I want waves, choppy and strong?
Sand whipped into my eyes by angry winds
Do I want calm, t he shores of a lake reminding me
With certainty that we all these moments
Do I want gardens climbing with possibilities or do
I want the silence of church? Can I say that quietly
I love when it rains
Because I can cry on the streets, I can cry as I walk
Let the stoic mask slip, collapse into misery
The rain driven is my protector, no gentle hands, no
Caring eyes “Are you all right?”
Just rain, relentless pursuit
No I’m not all right
But I will be
untitled
Dear Diamond,
I never really wanted you
With the thirst of other girls
I didn’t care if you were around my neck
Until I opened the box
And it caught the light
And since that night I see
Myself on yachts and in mansions
Camera pans to the man next to me
For he is the object of my dreams
He has stamped his initial with his shiny gift
Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
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