Under translucent layers of coffee cup rings,
Aged cigarette butts
And wrinkled receipts
Sits our picture...

It isn’t in a frame,
Pristine and pure like my wedding dress,
It is drained of most of its color,
Stale as the air that surrounds your lungs

You will take me places, places you wanted to go, but never could

You will explain why it is that we wish upon wishing wells,

And I will take it upon myself, to learn how to dance upon your two big left feet



You will check the closets at night for monsters

Monsters made of coat hangers and misplaced sweaters,

Then you will leave.



I will wait for you to come home by the front door,

Mommy will drag me away, but I will always return

Not understanding that your absence was permanent



(Like the scars on my wrists)



You won’t be there to catch me when I fall off my bike,

No instead I will scrape my knees, wipe the blood on my pants, and try again



Then he will come into my life,

And he will tell me he loves me like you never did,

And I will believe him, and he will take everything



(Like you did with your suitcase, and my heart)



And then one day I will meet the one,

And he won’t understand why it is that I am so ******* broken

He will try to show me the beauty in the world and in the stars

Not comprehending that I can’t get past these scars

I'd draw you in
Following the careful line of your jaw
Down your neck
Across your shoulder
Letting the memory mold the natural curvature of your body
Pressing my own subjective view of your ascendant gaze into the back of my mind



Oh, yes my dear I'd draw you
Just to watch you burn

I am the wolf of Wall Street
I am a woman  
My empire, my rules
You invested your heart
And I brokered it for another

I wish someone- anyone would give a ****.
Just a curious soul that would appreciate my being, my poetry, or my photographs
Yet as I drain the last of the whiskey from my glass, I read the room with heavy eyes
Twelve. Twelve men are here, and three are staring back at me
All gawking at my body like hungry, brute, animals.
They do not care about my intellect, or my desires
They just want to wear me from the inside out

I asked him what he wanted
to drink, and there was silence.
I cleared my throat and tried to search for some recognition of my existence in his eyes.
Yet, to my displeasure they were glazed over and deserted of light…
except for the mute reflection of his Ipad screen.

Look Up! I wanted to shout, but simply stood smiling.

His (I can only assume to be...) brother, nudged him after what felt like an eternity.
“Jack!” His brother grunted and returned his attention to a text he was sending.

“Water.” The boy snarled in response, barely flickering his eyes away from the screen.
I returned with his drink and the boy said nothing.
I glanced at the seemingly perfect American family of four from a distance feeling sad.
Not for myself, but for that little boy.

He will never know the luxury of a completely uninterrupted and benign conversation over a family dinner;
He will only know the comfort of having a game at the tip of his fingers.

And he will never know what it feels like to be at a sleepover where they really did play games.
The kind that required patience and not always getting the monopoly piece you wanted.
**** that thimble.

He will never know the excitement of rushing home when the street lights came on.

Will he even know what running barefoot through the grass feels like?
Will he know the sadness of catching a lightning bug and having to let it go?

He will not know the comforts of reading a book with a flashlight underneath his covers while a thunderstorm passes.

He will never be able to write a girl a hand written letter
Knowing the way to her heart through the careful art of making words with beautiful loops, crossed T’s, and dotted I’s

Nor will he know the anxiety that emulates when hoping to receive one back.

No, he will never know the privileges of an extravagantly simplistic society.

Whatever happened to “with liberty and justice for all”?

You say all lives matter, but you have never known when yours hasn’t

No, because you were born with an invisible knapsack full of privileges

While I was born with imperceptible shackles around my feet

And the system, praise the political system, because it has done you right

Because your self-worth, and your value in society was assigned to you at birth

But you claim you cannot see color,

And the truth is, I believe you

With your white schools, paid for by your white neighborhoods,

Embraced by your white government, sheltered by your white police force

How could you?

But I can see color.

For our jails are darker than the northern Atlantic sky,

While our government is lighter than the hoods slung up by the KKK,

We must embrace the permeation of a rigid political system

Segregation. Cannot. End. Without. Integration.