My heart in pieces
In velvet lined boxes
Spread far and wide
Still beats


I hear it at night
When the power goes out
When the fan goes silent
And it pounds in my ears
I'm here
I'm here
I'm here


I resent its resilience
Its tacit refusal to stop
But it's been some time
Since I lay alone in silence
Hating it


Yet I still feel it
The increase of fear pricking the back of my neck
The decrease of another disappointment
Beats lost to a foolish investment
Aching in the hollow space beneath my ribs


I wonder if its guardians hear it
Thudding on mantels
In closets
Threatening to throw the clasp
Leap back to itself
To me


I ask why it persists
An answer never provided
Except for the insistent
I'm here
I'm here
I'm here

If I strip it all away
The varnish and the shine
Let the finish dull
Will you still see
That I have good bones?


Wipe the kohl from my eyes
The stain from my lips
In decisive swipes
Reveal the pale beneath
Let the fear and weakness show
Will you have the courage
To hold my hand?


I am so much more
Yet so much less
Than the sum of my assembled parts
Contradictory cogs spooling themselves away
Inside my head
The work never done


In my dreams
You leave me
I scream whispers to make you return
And I'm alone still
When I awake
An arm stretching across sheets cool
From absence


In my waking imagination
You could love me if only

I thought it was important
To recognize
And celebrate
And embrace
The days and years we loved each other
As often as possible


I thought that the day at 19
When we said I love you
For the first breathtaking time
Was as worthy
As the day at 27
When we cried and said our version of I do


I thought you would learn
To value what was us
As much as I did
But it never came
And you mocked my sentimentality


I think I'm better off without you
Free now to create special days
To recognize
And celebrate
And embrace
The days and years I will love myself
As often as possible


I think someone else
Will want to share these with me
To build me up
Not to minimize me for their own gain

Branches reach
As fingers to the sunrise
Desperate to hold
What is too far away


Shot through with vermillion
Sailors take warning
But the tree still yearns
Undeterred by threats of wind and water
Its roots reach deep
Bark thick and whorled
Resolute


Promises were susurrated
Before the leaves fell
With no intention to break them
Keep reaching
Survive
Until the distance is closed
The welkin finally embraced
Or rot sets in
Limbs crashing to earth
A trunk remaining
A testament to having tried
Still longing

You are a late autumn sky
Offering glances of sun
Retreating
Leaving me cold
As the wind picks up


I lift my face to the glow
Hoping
Stay
As the clouds scud back
And I stand
Waiting
Watching
For one more revelatory moment


I can never predict
Warmth or snow
Can never dress for the occasion
A failing forecast


I want to go inside
But I can't stop standing here
In anticipation

​I am tired of the platitudes
Of "what doesn't kill you" apologists
What doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger
It just doesn't kill you all the way

What doesn't kill you leaves you broken
Irreparable 
Leonard Cohen's light getting cracks

What doesn't kill you makes you brittle
Susceptible to more breakage
Rare is the one who says 
I want that shattered thing

What doesn't kill you makes you angrier
Wary of anything that looks like what didn't kill you
Because it likely still walks

What doesn't kill you makes you sadder
Grieving for what you've lost 
Can never have again 

What doesn't kill you makes you hungrier
For something that will never fill you
Jaws gaping, stomach growling 
Still empty

What doesn't kill you makes you tired
It didn't kill you but you're still
Fixing the unfixable
Fighting the unfightable
Mourning your own incomplete death
Feeding the insatiable

It is too much to hope
This week
That Sunday services
In stark white churches
In unincorporated towns
Will focus on the teachings of Christ
As they were meant


Men in white robes
Have spent the year
Their lives
Blaming Eve, Pandora, Lilith for all sin
Love thy neighbor only if his eyes are blue
And you can call him sir

Here we are. Again. Still. And I am angry. I am fearful. These feelings that won't go away. The advice is not to normalize and I'm not. Because I can't.


I keep thinking back to a conversation I had with an older couple the other morning. I've been engaging more with those I normally wouldn't and they were among them. I asked them, with their white, wealthy liberal reputation, if they would intervene on the behalf of someone in danger in our new world of KKK endorsed presidents. The woman looked at her husband, as if to request permission to respond. He looked at her, as if to tell her "you handle this." She said to me "we have in the past." That was it. Her words had been carefully chosen and her message was clear to me. She had intentionally left out "and we would again." What she was telling me was that they've done their part, passed the torch. They will sit and watch as swastikas are painted on buildings. They will avert their eyes when hijabs are forcefully snatched from women's heads. They will remark on the age of the tree when the lynchings begin. Chances are, they will blame me when I'm assaulted.


These people who marched and resisted passively are choosing not to aid their children and grandchildren in our time of need. They fought for unity and now they sit away, actively divided. They're doing it because they got what they wanted from their own movement but never felt a need to share it. They've retired in comfort, can travel at will to their own safe enclaves. Even the torch they're passing is unlit. They hold the matches and refuse to give one.


I didn't realize it at the time, but that moment hardened me. In the days and hours since, as I've dissected her words and tried to make sense of them, extrapolated five words into so many more, I've wanted to rescind my response to her. My response was "I accept and respect that." I neither accept nor respect what she, her husband, and an entire generation of freedom fighters are currently doing and I've resolved to return their favor. They paved a path as far as they needed to go, left a pile of bricks at the edge of a dark thicket known for its savagery and told us we're on our own. And so, when someone like me, someone less averse to inciting violence picks up one of their bricks and throws it at her face, I will look her in the eye before the moment of impact, I will say "you forgot this." and I will lay my next brick with bleeding fingers and tears in my eyes.

I've hated you since I was an ugly lamb
A creeping slithering feeling
Deep in my skin
Saw your fleece for its falsity
Knew you for the predator
Nobody else saw
And it frightened me
Run and hide


You adopted our mannerisms
Learned to bleat
But the timbre was never right
I was the only one to hear the hissing


Now your disguise is wearing thin
Tattered and crusted with muck
They're seeing you for the first time
What you are


They're seeing me too
I was never an ugly lamb
I was a mongoose
Now that I know
The truth of each of us
The tale tells itself

Today I am a broken doll
Golden curls tangled
Face cracked and spidered
My hands and feet lay beside me
Crushed to porcelain powder
Stuffing stringy at the stumps
But I am still here


My nation did this to me
Left me to waste
Declared me dirty and useless


But they failed
They failed to harm my mouth
To mar my Cupid's bow
And I may not be able to move from this place
But I can still scream


You thought I was loud before
Pull the string
See what I have to say now