Not today

Tomorrow,

There is something fearful about the promise of tomorrow, 

Tomorrow, 

I will re-open my faith I've once buried next to the shelf where I stored my pride, 

I will put out this house fire of a home, 

I will buy my mother flowers,
real flowers,
I will watch her mouth curve its way into the type of beauty only sunrise offers, 

I will learn to hold this stubborn tongue, 

carve thank yous in the place of insults, 

I will leave my broken yesterdays, 

stop performing autopsies on unwelcomed disappointment, 

stop recreating what I should have done, 

I will give myself a tomorrow, 

but not today, 

not today. 

Half of the Sky by Emily Mao

And we wrote her into poetry,

Took away her pain, her story,

Made it worth nothing more than the words we dug up to describe it.

We bled her pretty,

Like a hummingbird,  

We bled her gentle,

Like the rose that bloomed across the center of her shirt,

The familiar figure of her shadow traced —

On bed sheets, buses, rivers, across streets in Nepal,

By men who picked her to play their Eden,

Spread her body into a paper angel,

We watched

And we told her to cry,

But cry beautifully,

Cry silently.

We never killed the bird,

But we silenced her song,

Seeked comfort more than we desired to carry her up —  to change a world,

So we left her heart — spilling poetically,

We left her body — crumbling down like a palace of cards,

We closed our eyes  — as half of the sky fell out.

If poetry was my mother

.

I used to color portraits of you, 

in yellow, 

marigolds blossoming after winter, 

you brought me to life. 

I used to cling towards your warmth, 

red, 

flicked

the pit in my stomach, hungry, 

I fed off your ink that spilled, 

like cool cool water in my heat

drowned myself in your coolness,
your coolness, 

catharsis, 

I am always heat. Heat.

I am red, shot temperated, shot steam, 

you took care of me. 

But Mother theres a famine in my mind, 

It is hot. It is hot. 

You can no longer quench it. 

Happpy

Yesterday I bought a gumball
out of the machine.
It came out pink, but I referred red,
I stuffed it into my pocket, then into my mouth, onto the bottom of my chair,
its taste danced on its tippee toes, pirouettes
playing hopscotch with my heart.
I laughed, like it was Christmas in September.

I am afraid of poetry

I am afraid of poetry,
I no longer crave its existence,

I am scared of its existance

afraid of its silence

poetry breaks me-

I am collapsing--

a pit, a pile of bones, 

empty,

afraid of spilling metaphors that remain nothing more than the words I give it, 

there is a storm in my mind--

I am falling. 

Poetry, 

the reason he tosses off his seatbelt, does not fear the crash

why she dives into an ocean so big she becomes it, 

Poetry leaves me crumbling, tossed into the fire, dissolving into the empty air above, 

But I suppose I am just too broken to make sense, meaning out of anything, make poetry

Poetry is the sky above me, heavy, surrounding me,   

chaining me down under heavy train tracks 

And 

I can,

I can, 

I can, 

I can --

but the floor of the sky fell out. 

girl

girl, mouth as cold as silence, 

more terrified of cursing strangers than family,  

spits words out of her steamed tongue,

crafted to carry hurt heavier than forgiveness, 

tears apart her mother's arguments, 

with the kind of insults she had to love someone hard enough to learn how to use, 

to be unmoved, just okay with her destruction. 

a series lines from unrelated poems

I still write your name on chalkboards and left over pieces of paper,
I leave out the a--

My old clothes that hide in the back of the garage all smell too unfamiliar,
like those of somebody I can barley remember

Some days I wish I could be an ocean,
as big as I am on the inside, on the outside,
I'll let the water swallow me,
drink down the---

I believe in a God--

You are the type of person who  used to make bucket lists on left over pieces of paper,
You are the type of person who does not bother to buckle your seatbelt--

You dance under street lights that radiate like multi-colored malignancies and count the days left in your calendar--

All those pages,
consumed by ashes
in the fire--

God never answers--

A sober alcoholic is always thirsty--

I rather drink acid than inhale smoke, ashes--

writing in cursive is a just another metaphor for life,
the words don't stop until your hands get too tired--

Mom I cannot answer you
I do not understand the words that fall off your unfamiliar tongue,
I'm sorry--

I'm still not finished carving your name off this page--

When everything hurts, hurt is everything--