I did not mean to come here
Or to dig my toes in the tepid sand
Wet beneath the surface and chilled

I did not mean to strip off my clothes
Sea glass and shell shards in my pockets
And wade into the darkly lapping waves
The breeze raising bumps over my skin

I did not mean to move my arms
Stirring the comb jellies to glowing
The outline of my body bioluminescent
Radiant in ways I have never been

I meant to go alone into the evening
To lose myself in the gloom
But now there is salt on my skin
A bell buoy sounding in the distance
Clanging in time with my breath
A metronome conducting me

Somebody told my mother that drowning was easy
And she believed them
Nobody told her not to believe dead men
Because they want you to join them
And they don't let you swim back

Tell me a bedtime story
Where everybody dies
And no one is in love

Paint the backs of my open eyes
With the world's ugliest truths
So that I might see them now
And give them color
Instead of watching them play out
In black and white
In the recesses I can't control

Fill buckets with blood
Atomize hearts
Make necklaces from human teeth
So that my own will stay contained and intact
My neck unadorned and my mouth full

Put many fanged monsters in my closet
Giant serpents under my bed
Tell me they will devour me before I can gasp
Swallowed whole without a trace
And nobody to worry where I've gone

Let me hear the screams of lives and sailors lost
So that my vocal cords might stay
​silent through the night
So that my grief won't spill onto my pillow
And I don't wake wondering why
I'm sobbing this time

Take away my talismans
Expose my vulnerabilities and my flesh to the air
Your bedtime stories can't rival my nightmares
Both imagined and already lived

Days when I feel I’ll fail the test of time, wasn’t given a study guide, showed up to class naked. My existence a deep purpling bruise.

I whittle and hone, yearning to disappear. A pile of sawdust beneath the pencil sharpener caught and swirled by ambient breeze.

Unable to erase what we've done. Keep tearing the page. An ugly folding thing, the marks are still there. Evidence.

You sit in the pit of my stomach and take up valuable space. I've been trying to vomit you up, but you won’t go. Saliva flowing salty in my mouth, I can't stop swallowing. There isn't enough air. I didn’t ask for you.

Breath hurried in her ear
As tongue and teeth graze neck
A slow sigh escapes her
Hands reach to hold something
anything
But she isn't really there

She is in her kitchen
Looking out a window
considering the dishes
Because this is just another biological betrayal
Brought on by one more person
she won't hear from again

Dinner was over
They were saying goodbye
He said he didn't know what to do
Because he wanted to kiss her
So she let him

He will ask her to come to his car
To go home with him
He will say she is beautiful
As he undresses her
But she isn't really there

She is in her kitchen
Looking out a window
Considering the dishes
Because her heart has frozen
Belongs to someone else
She won't hear from again

She drapes an arm over him afterward
As he catches his breath
She makes small talk
raises her chin to look at him
But she isn't really there

Kitchen
Window
Dishes
Because she's only here for reassurance
That she's alive
That she can be heard from again

Sharpen your knives
Clutch them close
Tuck them into each pocket
Because someone is coming
And it isn't quietly

They're saying your name
From inside the darkness
You know it's you they want

If you're lucky
The fight will be quick
And clean
You won't slip and slide
As your blood mixes
On the old tile floor
Leaks into the fissures

"It will never come out"
The old lady says
as she clucks her tongue
and scrubs on hands and arthritic knees
A lock of hair slipping from her braid in her vigor
The smell of pennies and bleach in her nostrils

But you will spare her the trouble
Because you've sharpened your knives
And you know where to aim
Inflicting the most damage
With the least mess
Quick and efficient
Just like daddy taught you
When he gave you your first blade
And a whetstone
Prizing his gifted diamonds rough
Over sparkling
You blew out the candles
Made a wish
From inside the darkness
This wasn't what you wished for
Must have been because it took two breaths

I am profanity
I wear it on a chain around my neck
Emblazoned upon my chest
I am profanity
For thinking
For feeling
For speaking
For acting
For my gender
For the smirk on my lips
For the width of my hips
For the ink on my skin, ever spreading
I am profanity
For lacking shame
For not believing
For my happiness
For my intelligence
For my sexuality
For my strength
For surviving

I am profanity
But what are you?

I was eleven years old
The first time I protested police brutality
In support of a black man an entire nation away
Savaged by officers while unarmed
The assailants acquitted
Los Angeles exploded
Some changes were made
For a while, things were quiet

Meanwhile, the violence silently escalated
Law enforcement no longer just beats black men and women
They murder them
In front of their own children
(If they aren't themselves children)
As if deadly force
Is the first bullet point in protocol
When interacting with someone of color

We can't go twenty four hours
Without hearing of another man
Taken from his family
In the process of living an ordinary life
And we wonder why there's such distrust

Why don't cities erupt anymore?
Have we become so inured?


Trayvon
Dontre
Eric
Michael
Tamir
Akai
Tanisha
Tony
Walter
Sandra
Freddie
Alton
Philando

Say their names
Be the legacies they cannot
Stop and record
Every encounter you witness between the law
And people of color
May your whiteness protect their brownness
Be brave
Civilly disobey
Repeat their names like a prayer
A holy mantra of exhausted rage
In the faces of men sworn
To protect and serve
Nothing but their own bloodlust

Long bones crack like lake ice
Thinning with spring's approach
It's unwise to walk on either
But sometimes it's the only way
To get yourself from one place to the other
Wary steps gingerly aching
For their destination
When will it give?
Perhaps a warning twinge
Before you tumble
Gasping into the cold

City lights seen from space
Forming the spiderweb
filling the rafters of my cellar
Connecting vertices
Supporting, homing, feeding

A fiber twitches
Alerting of an intruder
Or a meal
Both unsuspecting
they walked in without seeing it
Gossamer tickling and sticking
Become an unwitting part of the network
Because nobody watching from above saw fit to warn them
Their vantage point too high
The carriage of sound too slow
To breach the distance in time

Perhaps it's a potential mate
Come to court
Will you bite off his head?
Or will you let him go?
Will he build a web like yours
A single string connecting you
Until each ancillary encounter he has
Becomes a satellite base?
Your web may no longer be yours
part of a larger system of stars or highways
you scud from one to another
And never touch the ground

If I met my younger self
I would tell her not to allow herself to be defined by other people's boundaries
Because her too much
Will feel so much like not enough

I would tell her that she gets to draw her own map
In whatever colors she likes
In ink or pencil
In blood or blackberry juice
Mark the hazards clearly
So that her roads can be safely traveled again
Make her oceans vivid and deep
Dappled with monsters both friendly and ferocious
Her mountains improbably tall and cloud kissed
So condors might fly and peregrines swoop

I would tell her there will be invasive species
But to be gentle because they are still alive
Guard against outright extinction
salting the soil does nobody any good
Put your balance before somebody else's
They have their own

I would tell her to expand definitions
Make her own words where she needs them
Language, like her, is an evolving creature
And it's never done until nobody speaks it anymore.