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?

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. 

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?

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?

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 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.