A light wooden box,

Notched with darkness.

Each corner has 4 stripes.

Walnut nested in pine.

Uncovered, showing off

Their oil-spill wavy grain.

A tree’s worth of history -

Flattened and smoothed.

A round little knob, to lift the top,

On its golden, nested hinges.

A box.

A craft.

A display of care.

It started with the wood pile,

The careful selection,

The drawn out design,

The effortless first cuts,

The forming of nature

Into 45, then 90 degrees.

Calloused fingers holding the sandpaper,

Asking something hard to be soft,

Something raw to be finished.

My first word: da da,

My second word: a call for my brother,

(Or maybe I was just calling for ball,

But I doubt it,

It’s my brother that brings the fun-

A hacky sack, a Koosh ball, a challenge.)

He’s competitive, despite winning everything anyways.

Infuriatingly calm on the rare occasion he loses.

He’s funny - jokes probably at your expense.

He’s lost in thought again,

Thinking about how he’s always right,

Wondering if there’s anything he doesn’t know,

Looking around to see if he can find anyone smarter than him.

He can’t.

He has an engineering degree,

Types 100+ words a minute.

Avalanche training complete,

He snowboards the black diamonds,

Wishing someone else could keep up.

Maybe he doesn’t know it all,

Just enough to pilot the way,

To set the bar too high for me to climb over.

He is a quiet leader,

Guided by a strong sense of right and wrong,

(Mostly described as stupid or not.)

On his bachelor trip,

All his friends agree,

“He is one of the best men I know,

We are lucky we met him,

Lucky to hold on to a friendship with someone so special.”

Lucky to lose each board game,

Each competition of tossing sticks at other sticks,

Glad to be schooled at pool, or darts, or any other trajectory,

Just grateful to be part of the journey.

I watch him do a wheelie on his mountain bike,

And can’t tell if he’s forty like the calendar would dictate,

Or if he’s still a 10-year-old boy,

Testing to see if his friends can keep up.

They can’t.

And neither can I.

Not now, as adults, 

Not when I was a teen,

And his beer-bloated-college body

Could still weave seamlessly around me on the soccer field.

He says his knees hurt,

But no one else can tell.

Mind made of metal.

When I visit his house,

There are endless projects-

Woodworking in the garage,

Coding on the laptop.

He taught me engineering isn’t so much a career,

But an insistence to know how everything works,

To turn ideas into steps into something wonderful you can hold,

Show your admiring friends and leave them wondering how.

Master of taking schemes from conception to completion.

Priorities spelled out on the Trello board.

I think of my own projects piling up dust.

Does his energy know no bounds?

Your love is a crest,

Golden and blessed,

A mountain removing its veil.

Persistence and chance,

Were leading the dance,

Joyfully merging your trails.

At the edge of forever,

Waits your next adventure,

The white landscape, a glorious gasp.

Gravity calls,

Lean into the fall,

Embracing each other’s warm grasp.

Extensions of you,

In this boundless view,

Though blurry with flurries it hides.

Your open hearts see,

Vivid futures will be,

Twisting, harmonious lines.

Carve your own path,

The impact will last,

Those following using your guide.

Crescendoed descent,

Excitement well spent,

Your heartbeats, now unified.

The silence of stone

And deep crunch of snow–

All notes in your tune of devotion.

Choreographed grace,

Setting the pace,

While lilies bloom with emotion.

A promise is kept,

Under each sunset slept,

Your melody, timeless and true.

Each day a new chance,

To love with each glance,

Endlessly vowing, “I do”.

I swear I’ve never felt skin so soft as hers.

Luxurious, the way silk sheets want to feel.

Her hair, too,

Must have been spun with gentle care.

Each thin strand vibrantly glowing.

She asks to use a darker towel,

After a shower, so the color won't stain.

I want to tell her to leave her mark -

Everywhere.

I want to beg her to paint the walls with her touch.

To roll a little longer in my sheets,

To leave me with anything she can spare -

Something more concrete,

Than an ephemeral memory.

She stains nothing,

But marks me instead -

Bite marks on my lips.

Nail marks tracing my spine.

A new color in my hair.

It had been years since we last kissed.

It may be years again.

Tonight, all that matters is -

When we touch,

We make each other's fantasies come true.

She kisses each of my piercings,

I lick her tattoos.

We caress each other’s scars.

Thanking each other for hurting,

For healing, and rebelling,

For becoming a safe place to nuzzle into.

For being someone who can consume me,

And leave me more whole.

The scars are still on my thighs.

The knife is still in my hand.

Even though it’s in a dumpster 6 years ago,

It beckons me from on the shelf at the store where I bought it.

Do you know the heartbreak

Of holding temptation

And setting it down?

Of throwing depression into a dumpster

And having it follow you home?

The hopelessness of knowing

The knife is not an object,

But an idea you can’t get rid of.

The knife becomes your fingernails,

Becomes alcohol,

Becomes a fight you didn’t mean to have,

Becomes the mirror you stand in front of

While you tear yourself apart.

Becomes you.

I am the knife,

And the dumpster,

And the mirror.

I am the pain,

And the healing.

The depression, 

And the overcoming. 

My partner doesn’t love me smaller.

Doesn’t tell me,

“You are getting too big for my ego.”

Never says, “please hide,

You’re embarrassing me.”

He wouldn’t cover my body in shame.

He’s too busy decorating me in praise.

He smiles when I grow.

Celebrates the space I take up.

He calls me worthy,

Knows I deserve to be seen.

He could put my face on a Jumbotron,

And still not see a single flaw.

He’d be too lost in seeing my eyes,

With that much color.

You told me - 

You like my

Beautiful

Blue

Eyes,

And for a second,

I wish my eyes

Were any other color,

Just so you’d like them less.

But I don’t want to change the color of my eyes for you.

I just wish you weren’t looking so deeply into them,

Or that your slimy tongue had never learned my name,

That it would forget how to worm it’s way into compliments.

I just wish your arm wasn’t around my shoulders,

And that it wasn’t the same width as my torso.

I wish I didn’t feel so fucking small,

When your beer breath hits my forehead.

I wish I wasn’t so sure you’d follow me,

That I called my partner on the walk to the car.

I wish I didn’t feel so scared

At a work event.

On my third day.

After months of looking for new jobs.

To leave a sexist workplace.

Just to find another sexist workplace.

I wish I didn’t see you in the office the next day,

And realize nothing changed for you.

Your walk, the same today as yesterday.

This was just another failed hunting trip-

A mild disappointment.

Meanwhile, my walk changed to run.

Ears perked at every office event.

Anyone’s beer breath, a burden on my shoulders.

Getting dressed each morning I’d feel the weight of his eyes.

I became afraid to smile,

Afraid to make eye contact.

What if they see what he saw?

What if they also can’t resist?

Most days I didn't find her very attractive.

But sometimes she'd wear bright red lipstick and I wouldn't be able to stop staring

At her lips. I'd watch the way they parted when she talked,

When she smiled, before she took a bite of spaghetti.

She was always eating spaghetti.

I’d notice the way she'd drip sauce on her comfy old t-shirts.

I tried so hard not to notice the shape of her breasts beneath the stains.

When she offered to do my make up for a date,

I let her, even though I knew I would've done a better job myself.

I was just curious how it would feel to have her fingers so close to my lips.

Her breath tingled on my cheeks,

As she smudged purple eyeshadow around my eyelids.

She smiled and called me beautiful,

As she drew her hands back from my face.

One night, a few drinks in, she admitted she had been staring at my lips too,

With our first kiss -

I had never imagined wanting to tuck her in at night,

Until I pushed her onto the bed and I saw all of her relax.

Her arms out, asking me to be her blanket.

Normally she was so guarded.

Competitive, in the way women can only be with each other.

(It is so much better when we collaborate.)

I remember sliding my hand into her panties,

(It was the first time I'd ever done that.)

So much softer and thinner than boxers.

I remember her chin shaking,

As she came too quickly around my fingers.

She moaned my name in red lipstick,

And I wished to never spell my name in any other color.

When my mom went to get the ultrasound,

Where the doctor was supposed to be able to determine my gender,

For the very first time.

I put my hand between my legs,

Covering any hope of figuring out what I had down there.

For many more weeks,

My parents didn’t know which outfits to fill my future closet with,

What color to paint the walls of my nursery.

Even back then I felt safest with my gender a mystery.

I’d heard everyone asking my mom,

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

And all the weight they assigned to either answer.

I hope it’s a girl, they are so much fun.

Boys are so much work.

I hope it’s a boy,

Then you don’t have to worry about them dating.

Or worse, getting pregnant someday.

What if they had never been able to assign me a gender,

What if I was just a shrug everytime someone asked,

Boy or a girl?

What if they cut open the cake at my gender reveal party,

And it was a rainbow?

What if I wore every color except blue and pink?

How would I know how many calories I should eat?

How tall I should grow?

How quickly I lose heat from my toes?

The familiar familial shuffling of cards,

Organized chaos manipulated by his wise hands.

A soft competitiveness flies off the cards.

I imagine myself to be a worthy competitor,

Remembering the last hand we played, 

I won 7-4.

Forgetting the years,

Of whispers carrying strategies,

During rounds labelled “just for fun.”

He taught me when to play the aces,

An admiration for the ten of diamonds,

The evasiveness of spades.

Pine, must, spaghetti sauce

Sneak their way into my nostrils,

Scents of the hand-built cabin, 

As I gaze out the framed glass wall.

The sky -

Threatening a dramatic show,

Of lightning on the backdrop of a giant mirror of water.

At the cabin, the sky demands attention

Unlike Grandpa,

Humbly surrounded by legacy.

His peaceful presence almost blends

Perfectly with the serene background.

Until you hear his chuckle,

And a younger, fiery man,

Appears as the twinkle in his eye.

I remember the years,

Of gently spoken knowledge.

Stolen conversations during accidental quiet.

Analysis of short stories,

Admonitions of political events,

The pervasiveness of love.

The feeling of getting lost somewhere you've been a thousand times before. 

Jeff Bezos went to space, because one of his friends

Pointed to the moon and said, “I’ll beat you there.”

He used 30 million starving stomachs as fuel,

As easily as I push an elevator button.

He spent a lifetime’s worth of carbon emissions,

On a rocketship joyride in a cowboy hat.

I’m sure the first billionaire that lives on the moon,

Will replace it with a billboard of his face.

So large everyone back on Earth can see

That he cares more about his ego than us.

I can’t help but wonder what it’s like

What it’s like to imagine that space is an attainable goal,

When I can’t get off the couch some days.

Why is any of this worth it to him?

If I had 200 billion dollars,

I would give everyone on the planet $20,

And ask them to plant a tree.

I want to be the kind of person,

That points to someone’s heart and says I’ll beat you there.

I want to race as fast as I can,

Signing my name on smiles along the way.

I want everyone to see that I care more about loving them,

Than anyone anywhere’s ego.

I am in a field,

Embraced by a forest.

It is only

You and I.

Our bodies

Are a contemporary dance routine.

While our eyes stay

Fixated

On each other.

Your exhale

Surrounds my face in warmth;

I become your inhale.

You told me,

“I always am

A part of you”

I believe you,

Because I once heard

Your reassurance

In my bold laughter.

Once, your eyes took over mine,

When I was looking in the mirror.

I saw myself as you do.

The grass rustles,

And I get goosebumps,

Everything here

Is soft, gentle.

Smooth rocks

Covered in pillows of moss.

Weary trees sit down instead of falling.

The birds sing to us,

And we sing back.

I belong here with you,

Somewhere as soft as me.

The breeze never tells me I’m too quiet,

And neither do you.

With no other noise around,

We finally hear each other perfectly.

This morning when I looked in the mirror,

There was something different about me.

I leaned in closer to inspect -

And noticed an opalescent shimmer in my hair.

One thin white line among thousands of brown ones.

I gasped, “How beautiful.”

I searched through strands to be sure,

And found it - almost translucent in its thinness.

I plucked it,

Just to hold it in my hand.

As I inspect it from different angles,

It plays with light like a crystal.

I wrap it around my fingers,

A strand of time itself.

How mystical it is to grow older,

How glorious.

Naked on the bathroom floor,

I’m surrounded by every color sharpie I own.

Originally purchased in high school for a craft project.

I remember feeling guilty about spending $23 to have all 18 colors,

But I was desperate, even back then, for my world to be more colorful.

I pick up a green sharpie and write “psycho” on my thigh.

With a purple one, I write, “absolutely worthless”.

A pink one - “I hate myself”.

One-by-one I use all 18 colors to cover my limbs,

Word by tortured word,

In all the horrible thoughts bubbling through my mind today,

Desperate to feel maybe like it’s not all in my head.

In grey I write… “Kill yourself.”

The orange sharpie shakes as down my shins I write, 

“Who even cares?”

“No one will save you,”

In aqua waves of cursive.

On one foot I write,

“I don’t want to be here.”

On the other - “RUN.”

As if I have anywhere to go.

“Fuck everything.” in bright red.

“I hate myself.” in lavender.

“I hate everyone.” in lime green.

“I want to die.”

“Please.”

On my ribs I write,

“I can’t breathe.”

“Whore” - on my hips.

“S-L-U-T” in black across my chest.

On my wrist I confirm,

“This is a cry for help.”

In case anyone would ever see me like this,

And have any doubts.

I add a dashed line down my forearm as if to say cut here.

I decorate my body -

The bright colors clashing with each other,

And I realize I am no longer these thoughts.

Covered in hatred and self pity,

I am exhausted of phrases to show my despair,

My mind is finally at peace.

Earlier I had imagined a lifeless body would be my last art project.

That I would slice open the dashed line,

And hope someone understood that I had to do it.

A colorful, gruesome finale for an unfulfilled artist’s life.

But a guilty $23 on craft supplies saved me,

By making a few hours more bearable.

Looking at myself in the mirror,

I cried for all cruelty that I show myself,

And all of the places in the world that it comes from.

Nested in my head, these insults felt so true,

Especially the more they echoed,

But externalized on my skin I can see that they are such a small part of who I am.

With relief, I sobbed.

As I sobbed, I showered,

Scrubbing these thoughts from my skin,

These words finally feel temporary,

Even in permanent marker they’ll wash off my skin,

So much faster than they’ve washed off my sensitive heart.

I remember once again,

It is creativity, not violence, that will save us.

One day it will be too late for Powerful Men 

To realize they are not stronger than this glorious Earth.

Greedy Greenhouse Gases will exhale

For the last time into a cloudless sky.

They watch their Powerful Wealth,

Wilt like lettuce leaves on exhausted soil.

Powerful Tools will cut down their last tree.

It will not even transform into paper before,

Their Powerful Trucks useless,

Entrapped by a dust storm,

Relentless as their corruption.

Their Powerful Flags will burn,

On the torches of prejudice they carry.

One day it will be too late for Powerful Men,

To realize that they are not buoyant.

They will find themselves anchored by a net of plastic,

To the bottom of the chilling ocean -

The one they said would never rise above them.

Dolphins will laugh, whales - sing, 

While hurricanes reclaim Powerful Houses,

Like they are bobbing bathtub toys.

They will watch their Powerful Cities flood,

The overburdened dams - broken.

Gorgeous Glaciers, infinitely larger than Powerful Ships,

Will split the ocean into tsunamis when they shake their hips.

Powerful Leaders will lose their precious bootstraps,

To hypothermia in the Ice Age they invited.

But for our Endearing Earth,

Spring will come again.

I am communing with my inner self,

We are having tea,

Chatting about topics only we care about and are excited about.

It’s nice to get on paper the things we care about,

So we can see later,

When we’ve forgotten,

Out there in the dizzy world.

I write to feel less alone.

To clarify my own voice and thoughts into something more concrete.

I write to remember.

I write to forget.

To explore.

Writing helps me share who I am,

How I think,

What I feel.

I write to distract myself from where I am,

To go somewhere old or new.

I write to laugh and cry and be human.

I write to try to understand how other people feel.

When I don’t write,

My mind feels like a file cabinet

With too many papers shoved in.

When I don’t write,

I forget my voice.

My thoughts fall out of my mind

Like a bottomless hourglass.

I write because poets are cool,

Writers - majestic.

I write because my handwriting tells its own story.

I write to tell my own story.

I write when I’m too in love,

Or too angry, or too sad, excited,

To do anything else.

I’ve written poems to explain how I feel when I had no other way.

I write to get it all out.

I write to fall in love,

In love with writing,

In love with myself.

I learn to be on my own side.

To answer my own questions.

I control the story, the pacing, the setting.

I can leave at any time.

I write because I roller skate,

And because I’m human,

And because Eva Cassidy died too young.

I might too.

Or I might get 60+ years to perfect a craft I love,

To keep seeing the world in new light.

To keep seeing the world become new again,

In each tiny moment -

Find the uniqueness and the universal,

And merge them until everything is both.

I am a spine furtively fortified

By growing towards the sun

Every morning as the fog dissipates

I play the harp in my diaphragm

In a garden of fearless future plans

In reality, it’s just my apartment

Brimming with thriving houseplants

Now that I’ve learned

To check for water in the soil

Before blindly pouring more in.

I am self-designed durability,

Unpicked skin. Untorn cuticles.

I traded the safety of self-doubt for a new adventure,

Knowing trust lives in my walking stick spine.

I am ideas blooming

In lightbulb buns of expansive curls.

Thoughts and images spilled on paper.

An unfinished puzzle,

Is an obscured masterpiece.

I am a clearing haze.

My mind reflects my environment,

Same as the ocean with the sky.

I am loving boundaries, like

“I prefer not to be swallowed whole.”

When structure gets tired,

I take breaks to dance to car horns.

I am fluent in coping mechanisms.

Master of quick pivots,

Queen of sidestepping wrecking balls.

Preferring creative strategies

For removing the abandoned structures

Of the things I used to believe.

In my opinion, the best hugs are bear,
And the best kisses have a little bite to them.
I want to feel the flame that lights your heart,

Even if it burns.
In my opinion, love comes in many forms,
And tastes,
And smells.
The other day I accidentally said I love you,
And that didn't go over well,
Because we are "just friends",
Or something like that….

I think I need to go back to kindergarten

where I learned to tie my shoes,
Because I'm tripping on the definition of elementary words.
Friend.
Love.
Forgive my slip of the tongue.

I didn't mean I want to make you mine,
Tie you down,
Bury your dreams in tomorrow's or could've beens.
I didn't mean I love you like a vow,
To never let you go.
I meant I love you,
Like I don't even want to go on a real date with you because your bedroom is my favorite restaurant,

And we are past all that chivalry stuff,

The only door I want you opening for me is the one to your thoughts.

I meant that time becomes inconsequential when I’m with you.

I like to go swimming in your eyes,

And dancing through your veins to the beat of your heart.

I want to lick your sweat and nuzzle your armpits;

I want to be weird with you.

Because I love you like each kiss we share always feels long overdue,
Like we can talk for too goddamn long about nothing,
Like we can talk about everything.
I meant I love you,
Like a gift you may not want but I'm offering,
Freely,
To care about you in exactly the ways you need me to,
Like it might not last forever,
But it will absolutely last through the night.
If you're gone in the morning I'll know why,

because I know you.
I meant I love you like my journal is filled

With years of me trying to pin down exactly how I feel about you,

Because I do love you,
Just not like I'm supposed to.

If “the most wasted of all days is one without laughter,”

We have never wasted a day.

Almost every word that leaves your mouth,

Teases a smile from my lips,

I am thankful,

Because waste is such an ugly thing,

And you make my life beautiful.

If happiness could be defined by a singular moment,

It would be Sunday morning lying on your couch,

Sun pouring through the window,

We’re watching life carry on without us.

People moving from place to place with such purpose,

Like some kind of high tech screensaver,

While we just sit there,

Slowly melting into each others beings,

Likewise melting into the couch.

The sun can be powerful like that,

Even filtered through a glass box.

If your couch could take us anywhere,

It would take us to Italy,

Where houses are filled with light and laughter,

Brimming with family and friends,

Like overflowing pasta dishes,

Amazing, but often way too much to take in all at once.

But, no, it wouldn’t take us there for the jubilant chaos,

It would take us there for the aftermath,

When the sink is clogged with dishes,

That are caked with drying glop,

When the house still has a slight echo,

From the boisterous voices that filled it just moments ago,

When we finally get to put up our feet,

Ignore the work that will need to get done in the morning,

And lay on our couch,

With the moonlight pouring through the window.

Peace is felt best by tired muscles,

And sleep is most welcomed by over-exerted minds.

Goodnight, we would whisper to the moon

And if the moon could respond,

He would say to us “You earned it.

Sleep well, my darlings.

Feel the peace that I have granted you,

Because you took the time to look at me,

With wide eyes,

And forget the earthly things for just a little while.”

But Sunday night came around,

And it's close relation to Monday morning,

Scared us into moving.

Time can be funny like that,

How it moves slowly in the moment,

But you turn around to see it's all gone,

And you wonder where it went,

But not even the moon can the tell you,

And he’s been around for a lot longer than we can ever hope to be.

Time,

Is neither created nor destroyed,

Because it doesn’t really exist in the first place.

It’s here and gone simultaneously.

It’s melted by moments in the sun,

And frozen by gazing at the moon.

It’s unreal,

Yet it defines everything about us.

If we could redefine ourselves,

And take away the weight that time carries,

Would it be like a pendulum suddenly without a pivot?

A crash landing.

Or would be like a baby bird learning to use her wings?

A couple crash landings,

Resulting in absolute empowerment.

Would it then be possible to not feel the guilt of laugh-less days,

Before you came around,

And even smiling took too many muscles.

Would it then be possible to live like we actually want to,

Not how we feel we need to?

You could travel the whole world,

Before you even realized you missed someone,

They were just there after all,

Forever ago,

Because without time,

Everything would be happening simultaneously.

If the sun could talk,

He would say, “Don’t dream so big.

If you reach too hard for the stars,

You’ll burn up in the atmosphere.

I’ve seen it happen.

Wake back up to reality.

Time is what keeps us all moving,

Don’t trade that for anything.

The moon is right about one thing,

You will find peace by gazing at the sky,

Peace that you have always already earned,

Just by being part of this magnificent universe.”

Time can be tricky like that,

How it tries to disguise itself as the enemy,

Constantly up in arms against us,

When really it just a friend with tough love,

A parent with guiding punishments.

All Time really wants from us,

is not to be wasted.