take butter knives to butterflies,
pump my cheeks with air to cushion their stay.

the views from the rooftop of my mouth
cloudy with bubbles of champagne laughter.

a flurry aflutter beats back the haze,
hoping to catch a glimpse of forever.

spiritual striation light my path
a focused array too hazy to grasp

my grip soft like putty
sand slips through the cracks

my hands unaccustomed
still grace everlasts

a flammable affinity,
emblazoned for The Trinity.

we pray our perishable parish
won't expire 'til infinity.

mere moths swarming at The Source of Light--
fettered and fattened,
hatchlings born battened
to bonds of sin--
our ancestral birthright.

manifesting an ephemeral destination,
we fools hasten to the west
where the sun sets opposing everlasting
a whisper of grace
pierces through the cacophony of death

prolifically infused with Life:
a steady seeping,
prophetic weeping,
climbing from the depths of strife.

Spiritual Centrifugal
wring me of my wrongs.
Osmosis of my soul
keep me awake in song.

now dawns the mourning of choice:
to be smitten or smote,
but a whisper of smoke--

incensed by yourself.

teardrop prism,
graceful dew
beaded upon my stillborn heart,

pool in the roots in my soul,
Holy Spirit take hold,

grant me an honorable transfusion.
make my dead end a good start.

cure my faith astigmatism.
corruptible corporeal
fumbling in the darkness,
straining to focus on the Light.

burn faith into my eyes
an inverse eclipse to light the way
a passionless passion ever burning
a longing for an everlasting flame

you asked if I'd tell you,
you said that you can't.
pussyfooting intensity,
we watch the flames dance.

kaleidoscope of emotions
focused and refracted.
papaya is the safe word
for falling in [redacted].

my words a time capsule,
my longing a cipher.
my sorrow an ocean,
pay tears just to tithe her.

my breath ephemeral,
my feelings akin.
leave letters,
spell out my beginning and end.

let bedrooms crash
what bones we question
feel sin from complex commotion

My yearning deep bodied like a healing broth,
a cacophony of sirens to cure a bad cough.
Browned bits on the bottom,
warm aromas within.
Bobbing for feelings and veggies
to drown out the din.

This feeling is familiar,
though you know her all the same.
A wrenching, tugging once removed
goes by a different name.

pots and pans,
plots and plans,
a bouncing of the knee.
a trip, a stare, caught in a snare,
my face too red to see.

I like my colors uppercase,
thoughts diluted,
worries muted.

Colors so loud they make you see shapes and swirls.
Colors for all of my multifaceted girls.

Colors so warm like a loving embrace.
Colors unafraid to take up space.

Colors that complement.
Colors for compliments.

Colors for me and colors for you.
Colors for the days that we want to see through.

Not all I am is transitory and ephemeral,
a bundle of nerves tangled between the dotted lines.
I ripple and undulate,
echoing off the walls of my expansive ribcage.

A girl curled up so tight
she ricochets like a pinball.
A kinetic confusion caught between frames,
bouncing around searching for meaning at the periphery.

I found myself dancing in the whitespace
between yourself
and how you see the world,
traipsing around the floaters and stars in your eyes
like an animated recreation
of our universe expanding,
drawn out to eternity with you.

Take my hand
and take off into the woods with me.
We can meander
until we find ourselves together.

Let love nest in our lovely mess
and pray the bees turn their ***** to us
this honeymoon season.

Let's get cheeky,
toss our clothes
and our cares
into the fire,
and watch the flames lick their lips
at the bountiful harvest
of loose ends and broken heart strings
we use for tinder.

The kindling kindly spits embers at us
like ****** on sunflower seed hulls,
cleansed
and ready to be born anew.

The greedy little ladybugs
eagerly waited to mourn me,

dying
to don their black spots as veils
meant to cover the raw redness of their bloodlust.

Dying...

and hoping that I would return the favor.

I can't write poems
because they won't give me a pen

because they're afraid that I'll **** myself with it.

But what they don't know
is that I'm not the perfect Venn diagram
between suicidalness
and patience,

that I'm not creative enough
or desperate enough

to use a ballpoint
or a fountain
or a quill

to hang myself
or poison myself
or slit my wrists.

And because they won't give me a pen,
I can't write poems
to
    save
            my
                  own
                         life.

She kept laughing
even though it wasn’t funny,

shrinking in the presence
of two men sent to interrogate her
about her purity,

the red brand hidden under her tongue
that she tried to hide under nervous giggles,
tried to mask with inappropriate joviality.

She tried to desperately communicate what had made her
choose the wrong side of the road
between laughter and sobbing.

She tried
and failed
to make them understand
what had made them think of her as a hysterical and trivial woman,
the stereotypical horrible driver,
unable to stay in her emotional lane.

You could be my Jericho,

and I,

your blasphemous lover.

you remind me a lot of your brother.
same delicate temperament,

but i could break through your walls with a twitch of my garish fingers.

you could be my Jericho
and i could be your blasphemous lover.

My favorite birthmark
is a brown dot near the center of my left eye
that makes my iris look like a leaky egg yolk suspended in time:
the mark of a girl
destined to never quite color inside the lines.

This is the most emotionally present
that I've been in a long time.
And now that roll has been called,
I'd like to go ahead and strike my name off of the roster.

It's way too soon
to write you a love poem,
but I think I may be in the socially acceptable time frame
to write you a like poem.

Yesterday, my doctor told me to cut cheese out of my diet,
so I'll try to keep the sentiment as vegan as possible.

Why doesn't my boyfriend want to hold my hand anymore?
It's always been clammy and frigid,
though I suppose it has gained this new
rigidness.

And no one wants to feel responsible
for a dead weight abandoned
in the palm of his hand.

And because it's my lifeless hand,
severed with all the fixings,
rabid and unruly,
nipping at the palm that smothered the life out of it,

Because of this,

he can't even pass it off
as a gag paperweight for Bill at the office.

My hollow regret fluttered to the ground,
bound by gravity
to fall as swiftly and ignorantly as my gaze.

When I fell back into the cramped nook of your shelf,
you didn't even acknowledge me amidst the other knickers and gnats vying for your attention.
You overlooked the viscous hatred glazing my bronze porcelain.

And after you spit-shined me in an attempt to erase the set-in stain
that so starkly contrasted all of the work that you had put into the cocoa complexion nurtured in the heated vacuum of your built-in incubator,
you showed me off to your friends,

your little nesting doll that had shrunk down to its true form,
so cute and abridged that you could fit its summation in your pocket,
doomed to eternally room with your dusty love shields and dingy photocopies of past mistakes.

You're the silent promise held
in fingertips lazily murmuring to my naked skin
while they cross theselves behind my back.

You told me that I was only eighteen
and I had the rest of my life to love other people,

And you told me that you weren't good enough for me anyway,

And that it isn't even worth trying long distance because some girl you met online broke your heart in middle school,

And you told me that you'd still love me,
only in a different way,

And you compared me to your ex-something-or-other and a cloying cookie,

And I kissed your neck as you were leaving
and you rubbed the lipstick back on my dress.