It's just hair Sometimes I am Covered in it Sometimes it Isn't there It doesn't matter Much to me Whether I am Blanked or bare I thought That it defined me Or that one way Made you want me I don't know Why I cared But you shaved Above my lip What I thought You wanted there So I still think It's why you left me That it was just Because of hair
I like the smell of steady rain The sound it makes on glass Quietly crashing Against the window pane The clouds a wall of heavy gray A day that's seemingly mundane
In silence he takes out the pieces And I pick out the strain Then he watches me get lost in Faraway thoughts that drift away He can't hear our hidden heartbeat Like a drumming through my brain I might have washed away Still here in water we remain
What is the usefulness Of regret? When the days and months Move ever forward And moments passed Are like photos, Some were not taken As well as others
There is a Transcendence in The letting go The long farewell to Yesterday's bowed head Presently washed clean, Hung out to dry In the ever persistent Cleansing of sun
Why wish for any decision To have gone another way? Would the lines On palms, in diaries Have brought us here If we made a choice With our head Not our heart Or simply on impulse?
I will be whatever you need to see in me today, My body a canvas open to interpretation. Here I am soft, delicate as silk; There I am sharp, rugged as stone. I am shifting, gliding, reshaping myself, I am swimming through the waters of my gender, Moving from room to room In this house I am calling my body.
But I am twisting in the hallway, Arms and legs spilling through every door; I am too much at once and so never quite enough. Tell me what you want, I will shape myself to fit. Make me compatible with your desire Until I forget the shape of myself entirely.
(In your rejection I’ve flooded our home, Drowning in the rooms where you once wanted me.)
I can't wish you happy birthday Because we are ghosts now Ghosts who do not linger On the same plane of existence
How abruptly we became memories While our lives were still Flourishing and so full How quickly the two of us vanished
I send you messages into the void Into the echo chamber of my heart Bouncing around in the dark I miss you, miss you, miss you
Sometimes I think I can see you Your face unchanged and wild But you are a wild dream That ripples away at my touch
Can you feel me reaching out Now that we live only in my mind? So many years since you disappeared The two of us remain only in me
I don't like anything I wrote today It's all too depressing And I'm not depressed I don't think
It's just January dragging me down Down into the snow No one's dreaming of white anymore No one's dreaming of January
The grackles are sitting in limp trees Shifting around quietly, waiting For the ground to thaw But it will be several months still
You are candlelight My yellow rose Every song I'll ever compose We are elegance And flowing words The freedom between Mated birds We've been thunder Pouring rain The healing after Endless pain I'm a soft brush With eternity Always painting You and me
You and I stand at the Shop counter We are buying a Freshly baked blueberry pie To bring over to your Brother's home towns away
You stand patiently In your thick woolen Overcoat, in the many layers Under your violet skirt That has faded to lilac
The shopkeeper counts Our shared coins And you look at me With the warmest eyes On this blistering afternoon
You look at me so innocently In this small, warm Bakery, like looking At me could melt the winter From our hats and mittens
You say thank you to the Kind man with the Graying mustache in The coziest voice I know as if it were my own
We walk down the street Down to the train, where You will sit close Beside me, and it will Not be the pie that warms us
The red-winged blackbird Clings to the cattail It perches on, Calling out in that Short, piercing chirp
They sway in the Gentle breeze together Like one entity
I wonder how the cattail Feels, if it likes Having talons Wrapped around its stem, To be joined in such a way.
I, who speaks often But says much of nothing I, who pictures the words That do not come out That stumble over My tongue and teeth My brain a stuttering Then silent and empty
I will my words into being In a moment's pause In the quiet of the writing When my mind races And I can catch my thoughts I send you my voice You, who reads me You, who's eyes Pass over my letters
I, who does not screech Like the hawk in the sky Nestle my meanings in The wanderings of creatures In the sun and the trees They, who speak The same language as me Who might interpret while I am just talking to you
An artist can insert light into the world Reach into their own acid stomach Pulling out their intestines Shining, glowing, posing as hope Let me make it so Let me take my own guts in my hands Twist them and turn them Into a blue and red balloon animal Give it to our tired country The rotten thing does not fester Inside me today. Can I do it? I want to take pieces of myself That have atrophied and heal them Turn them into something resembling art
"I can be someone's and still be my own." -- Shel SilversteinSide blog: @a-sign-of-fire
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