official writing portfolio

7/31/2019 Official Writing Portfolio

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like stained glass:

a poetry portfolio.

sara madren



how we learned to taste fear.

I kissed you, that night, with so much blood in my mouththat you still swear to taste me.Two years later, I wake inside salt-stained sheetsand scribble love poems

into my flesh.Put your mouth to my scarsand know pain.

This is how you taught me:my roots are expandinglike veins;course yourself through meuntil my lips taste like poisonto everyone but you.

We have redefined fear.

Rusted blades are spewing promises-keep speaking linoleum ribcage.

To love meansto never forget.



formaldehyde stains.

The first time you asked me to catch you,I let you slip through my fingerslike a firefly;like a falling star that should never be wished on.

I promise not to catch you.These hands you are holdingare no safe place to land.

I said, not all hearts have empty pages.I wrote my billets-doux in blood.

My hands crumple in when they should have grown out,like I should have grown out

of my size-extra-small temper,of each regret I grew from my ragelike weeds.I wore you into my chest like a stain.

The holes in my heartbeat are battle scars,and we all have our reasonsto shake hands with shame.

No, you cannot fall here.

there are too many daysmy breath is sharper thansuicide notes.

trust me,I will break you like breadin my fingers-

I will eat you alive.Pick your bone baskets cleanuntil nothing is left.I have bruises for eyes-and i like it that way.

Please.My glass-jar soul is too small for you,



and your firefly skeleton glows.

I know I could take youlike august nights take the cold-but the world needs your light.so shine.

and yet, here we are. you are melting.I trace my fingers to skin likeformaldehyde,forming heartbeatsin war zones-

we caught each otherlike stars,

and we call the scarslove.



an open letter to my rapist.

Eleven months later,there are still nights i taste you.Still feel your whole body indented in mine.

I still touch the holesand each anxious red line

where you carved hate through my soul; where you stole away heartbeatsto make room for pain.I still wake up shaking,bedsheets all salt-stainedfrom 3-am nightmaresof your hands on my skin.

Your sin is still staring me down.

I've been aching to ask youif you are storing my heartbeat-still keep what you stolein the dark dusty basement of your soul.Because trust me, I am still carrying yours.

did you think i’d forget?no, my ribcage still knows you-

how you took all my no’sand reclaimed them as yours.

Your scent is still staining my nose.My mouth carries corpses of No, you cannot touch here-screaming like sunsets.That night, you raped hope from my stomach;my wrists kissing pavement,lungs kissing concrete;teaching windpipe to shiver.

I still feel you whenever boys touch me.

But that’s not what I came here to tell you.No, I am writing like lifelines,like words are my pulseto say my heart is still beating-that I am still beating you.I’m still standing.



I don’t feel used up and dirty, these days,bruised up from your body in mine.



I am healing, these days.My pieces are sealing,finding peace in the momentsI recall all these things

you can’t steal:like my eyes that still open,and how I'm breathing in life.All these things that you’ll never grasp,never be.

It’s been eleven months and twenty eight dayssince you broke open my body,ripped open my screamsand touched flesh-

but not souland not heartbeat.

No, you cannot take or own this.No, you cannot touch here.



numb.

She was howling, last night, with her open frost lips.This song is yours, she promised,icicles dripping sweet in her mouth-I am yours.

She was snowflakes, sometimes, making love.Liquified on my skin, dissipating dancing;melting dead,all for touch. For the nakedness of it all.Her frostbite eyes implored, andmy god, how it stung- how it always stings.

And her ice was crackling like bones,even then.

When she sunk into my cheeks, my marrow,I knew what love meant.The cold was skeletons in my arms,sunk deep under my skin.The whiteness of it:Arteries feeling frigid, or not really at all,fluids frozen in place.her blood all mine.

Nobody had ever held me like that-

like we were part of each other;like love was enough

to freeze it shut.

Some nights, when it hurts enough, we become each other.Love is cold. Love is numb. Love is frost. Love isus.

I was beating colorless in her hands.

Were we always the same?-Each word hanging fog in the air-

Was I always you?

When she kissed me, my lungscollapsed into cold;like all my air turned to ice.to me, love means heartbeats



still frozen in place-and the way I don’t miss breathing in.



the lump.

It's lemon-scented, here,like that could cover up death-but it still clings to the clothes, to the lipsof us.

The incandescent lights peer down,shameless scrutiny showing.The nurse's fingers, they tick,pity-stained;does she see us?These mornings, we flickerso fast.

We are the waiting room:

the old magazines, grinning and garish;the latex, the sterilized dreams.The melting, the beating;the blue-tinted skin and the hair and thefingers, always tracingover the scars-the malignancy.

We are the waitingto die.

I am the lump in my chest,in my throat;

I am the spacesthe chemocan’t cure.



locks of love.

As she cut it, it bled.The sunbeams, strand by strand, can scream-I hear them. The beautician cradles my sacrifice;can she not see this is blood?

The braid of blonde in her manicured hands,she says, this hair, it will go to the cancer-stained fighters;the girls bald and bared, the beautiful.This is beautiful.

Her nails to my scalp; her voice, sugar-sharp, slices in.Thirteen- pleasure dripping- we cut off thirteen.Each inch a story, each inch about growth and sun and cells-

But these cells, they are dead, from the follicle out.Most of all, so am I.There is martyrdom, here:the hair, the sicknesschipped away like old paint,like soil scrubbed off.

I will not tell the beautician how I rot, orhow this hair is my cancer.As she cut it, it bled-

I bleeddry,

nothing lost.



mother.

I.

The bedsheets were twisting like bones, and the ceiling whispered; terror engulfed. I was

still a child, and alive in a way that made me realize that I was mortal, which terrified me.There was only one thing that could ever calm me. Her fingers were tiny caterpillars,crawling through my hair; a welcome discovery. Always something new. Her voice crooned,soft and deep, “you can sing this song when i'm gone...when i'm gone.” And my world wasblue, she was blue. Passion, calm, soft, asleep. The monsters deceased.

People always said we looked alike. We were too pale and we dressed all wrong, our clothesall made of cotton and sunshine. We made pancakes for dinner and made fortresses fromtrees. And when it stormed enough, we spent hours on front porches, waiting, watching,letting the lighting surge in our veins. We believed in that storm, in power, in each other.

I see pictures sometimes, from these days, when love was all I knew. My hair was californiablonde then and it hung in dirty clumps, threatening to peel off my scalp in layers. Hers

was dark, rolling hills of earth. In the photographs she held my hand while she laughed, andI slouched against her, all sunspots and freckles, posed anxious smiles.

I don't know what they could have seen. She was magic, and I was just a six year old girl.

II.

Nobody says we look alike anymore.

I still have those sunspots, but I’m always trying to cover them up, bury them beneath layersof foundation and secrets. And I’d lie to myself, say that this is who I was meant to be. My lips grew wide, ripe with words. The only thing that stayed the same was my eyes- suchterror in those eyes. Demons can hide but never die.

Her face changed too; pain and age grew lines into her face. Her wrinkles were train tracks,

and her eyes were dusty green trains; destroyed and riddled useless with years of graffitiedabuse. There were stories nestled in those lines of her face; dusty aches. And if you look inthose eyes, the ones that used to be laced with life, they’re all iced over, the train stopped in

winter. She's trying to numb every word I ever said; struggling to not show anything, nopain, or anger, or anything anymore. And I don't let myself notice, because I know if I dareto watch it happen, i'll see the truth: that she still gives a nervous care, she sees that she isn’t magic anymore but something real and breakable and failed.



And sometimes when she smiles I can smell the pain sneaking out past her teeth. Its a scent i'd know anywhere. Bleeding, her tonsils all raw from yelling so loud, brilliant red, not blueanymore. It's screaming sarawhydontyoustopbeingabitch and who would’ve known that such a small woman could shout like that? Just like the monsters I used to see.

I still remember. My demons were rattling, creating tempests deep in my pharynx. I could

feel the attack coming like an earthquake in my throat and I ran for cover but it still pouredout, rattling through my vocal chords, my own personal natural disaster. And it’s my fingernails making marks in my wrist, curling inwards, tiny crescent moons that refuse toshine. Tsunamis raged in my throat, and what’s so wrong with making mistakes and I’m just fifteen and why? Why, why, why. There was salt in my words and it tasted way too much likedefiance, like defeat. My lighting forsaken.

I never asked to be so haunted. I became more than myself. There’s monsters in my throat where iloveyous used to be. So does that make me a monster? I’d like to hope not. Maybethey snuck into my throat by night, when I was still young, and love was more than a word.

When I was young, I remember her smile, a masterpiece now torn. All Monet and pain. Andsometimes when she grimaces, I can imagine that grin, when it was still whole. The corners

would turn and she'll smile again, if i'd let her.

And maybe if I could swallow the monsters, just this one time. If I could keep the storms at bay, yeah maybe… Maybe somewhere beneath all the screaming there’s still that smile.Buried and emaciated, there’s still the same woman with her powerful frame and eyes that shine like Christmas lights on front porches in June. She still loves, just quietly, brokenly, anaching pain for the little girl who's eyes were like storms, all terror and monsters. Love andhate are the same, if you mix them right; always a drug of the heart.

Until then she’ll wear the bruises on her cheeks like they were just clay or dried up paint,like you could peel them off and reveal the woman beneath. Beneath them, she wants tobelieve you'd find her cheekbones strong and proud, and her arms still strong from carryingthat baby girl. The weight of a heart broken for love. And she’ll carry my insults in the smallof her back, my own verbal catastrophes, designed to strike, designed to kill. And every word

will ferment and rot in her fortyfiveyearold body, her erratic-beating heart, her legs that quiver and threaten to fall…

And somehow she still laughs.

Eyes rolling back, she laughs.

III.

That laugh would haunt me for years to come.



It became my monster. The ceiling would writhe as my eyes clamped tight, trying to forget every single attack, my fingers pressed tight like bandages. They could not heal.And when she called, the words would free flow, always desperate, always needy. Little

weeds, needy for her to heal, for the ice to melt, for her to be magic and beautiful in thisbrave new world I was seeing for the very first time. I wanted to believe in revival of hersoul, that I could erase the scars.

I was nineteen and beating; a miracle in every step I took. So much room to be so empty. Icould love but never wholly. Heal me, Heal me. I was alone, truly alone in this world made of fire. The pattern repeats until all that's left is scars and thoughts. Passion, destroy, rebirth.I went home and watched the children growing like weeds at her feet; blooming in aclouded light. I wanted to wash the clouds away. To let her grow, as she'd let me. I wanted tobe her water; to create, instead of destroy. But instead we'd sit. We'd trade our words, wearthem around our neck, nooses or necklaces, I couldn't decide.

And when the night was over we sat on the front porch, the silence a wall, each of us

separate entities, separate universes. Broken worlds by our very design. And the rain sat inand this new storm consumed. The fire of the past drenched, until all that was left was us.and we felt it. A new energy source we couldn't quite place. Memories began sinking back of

when I was six, but this was different. So different. It was quiet and my hand brushed hershoulder, magic jumped. I was magic, or she was. My arms wrapped around hers and thetears were diamonds, precious. We entangled; weeds in our own right, needing each other tostand up straight again.

She was alive within me. Her body was my body; her eyes my eyes. And in giving me hereyes, the terror deceased. I saw myself, and I saw her. My mother; life. I understood what

people had meant all those years ago; how we looked alike. Faces aside, our eyes werescreaming, alike, identical windows to the soul. Twin storms. We were electric in that second,the only lighting we would ever need.

I was not a child anymore. I was not broken. I was whole in her love, and she was whole inmine; I would never be alone again. When the world failed, and we were stripped down toourselves, we'd hold each other in our eyes.

She is the world in my naked eyes.



exhaustion pipes.

I found you burning-the alcohol in your lungs,the macabre of it.How it clenches

and claws.

Scrubbed raw, you thought tonight you died;

your vomit-stain eyes, your yellow skin.screaming within each gasoline gulp.

You thought love

was the dying, the void-the only honesty left.

But me, I saw death,how it mocked;how it’s noxious fingerstouched down.it’s the ashes

when I found your body-

slumping into your seat tasting ghosts in your face.

It’s that space in your ribsbetween livingand not.

I can’t just sit and watch you rot.I promise you,

what you do isn’t love.there’s no life left in burning away.

Let me pull you, whole,through the ashes;love means using your fireTo solder youshut.



bone baskets: a love story.

It’s winter in my bones again.It’s about wounds, the wind saidthrough that old dried up mouth--

when night touches you right

with its whimpering fingers,That’s love.And the paper’s skin-and-bonesseemed silent.

But me, I was that paper once.Don’t fill in the bundle of ribs,don’t touch my arteries straining.Have you ever been bruised beneath the skin?And life becomes all about keeping dizzy.

They called this and me beautiful, then.

But they call everything beautiful, really;It’s about stars we don’t see,the lives we don’t live.

I ran my fingers over and throughmy anxious ribs, wherethe flesh grew back;

Where I became whole.

Where I found words again.

And softly, through these lips like rivers:It’s not about wounds.Just stories.

That’s what beauty is-How we fill in the bone baskets;

We touch the places where we learned to

grow back.



the hymns we don’t sing.

heaven is the flesh growing steady on my ribsat night, when the ceiling is speaking in tongues-and my bedsheets, they twisted like bones.i tried to claw out the noise

but my hands were too small,always shrinkingfor you;

i was young, even then.

shiver sweat silence,how it promisedsalvation.i was skeletal and empty

enough to believein the steady vibrationin the small of my back;dizzy mornings with yellowed-out eyestouching god

and i tangled my spine in my hands, some nights;each vertebrae sang alleluia.translucent at last.

heaven is the fleshthat i clawed from my heart

with my own terrified hands,

the very handsthat once touchedor were touchinghell.



21 grams.

To the girl in the mirror, I'm sorry.

That night, I shot anger from every pore;melted that down

and spat the rest in your face.I wasn't trying to die, just revealthe girl underneath-like a star in a galaxy we hadn't found yet.I just hadn't found me, yet.

When I picked at my skin, I was praying to peel it from my too-white bones,but hands were sweating and smalland I was scared of the worlds

that swelled and unfurledunderneath them.

Back then, my fingers were tangled in knots-Like not now, not good, not enough

and the stuff hearts are made of was seepingall over the kitchen floor, that night.I wore grief like a necklace, back then,

or a noose-I could never decide.

I'm so sorry.

But with my heart on the ground like that,staining the tile,I was free.I cut myself freeand I could see

my reflectionbeating fast like a hummingbirds wings-and I too, searched for home.

Is this home?



I am learning that I weigh lessthan a penny, some nights,if I forget I'm human at all-learning how to fall downlike a star,always singing-

always stinging with the weight of my wings.

and I swear i was 21 grams, that night-the weight of a soul.

here’s my sole reason to live-I’m alive and i’m breathingfor a girl in the mirror

with eyes like scissors,

and anger enough to cut off the noose

This is for when my eyes were still robin’s eggs,breaking open-open, I was not shattered,

what mattered was the open

of my mouth, like a rose:To the girl in the mirror,I’m so sorry.

I rose, with my hands small and empty.fill them;touch my hummingbird wings;sing out like astronauts findingour star.

I am starting over-

I’m so sorry.let’s start over.



skeletal.

and at 3 am i could touch my bones,the weeping wracking lines of them-this is american, they said,this is beautiful.

and fuck that.

it was never about my own weight, you know- just the weight of the corpsein my heart.i know exactly how much a dead dream weighs.

so here’s to our skeletons.the ones we couldn’t quite hide in the closet-

thrust out of our souls and caught in our throats,turning to ash in the light.

they watch us like we are dissectible-glass eyes in our glass houses.their words strong like i wasn’t, back then.i wore my heart on my sleeve, those days, untiltheir judgement burned it all the way through.

this is conviction, now-

do you see the way my eyes are folding?hands pressing lines in my palms,

fingernails cut in familiar ways.

to me, it was always foremptiness.

this classroom is full of our ghosts,and the girl on the other side of class is crying.

wiping tears away quickly with the sleeve of her sweater,

black smearing across her arms like scars.how many is she hiding?

how many are all of us hiding?

when i was dizzy and dying,i could have sworn i could fly.



if i was still free like that,instead of in the cage of this room-

well then, i’d loveto hold her pieces togetherand whisper a line from her ears to her heart,

each vibration a promise that i've been there, too.



the genocide of heartbeats.

There was holocaust in my eyes, once,and some nights I still taste the ashes;recalling the gas chambers of his touch tomy cinder-stained heart.

Breathe him in.

There is sin still waiting in the ceiling tiles where my sleepless night stare drilled it through.This is how I forgot to glow.This is the flow of my hands, obituaries read in my lifelines;I bled out memories that never burn.His ignition swam over my surface-and some things never wash clean.

Like the first time my soul dripped throughthe cracks in his fingers.His kiss was a matchstriking sparksto destroy.

This is the Auschwitz of love poems.This is an open apology to my windpipefor the words I still smoke like chimneys of my flesh,like cigarettes-

praying the cancer will kill.

If these scars could speak,mine would only say

sorry

for the way I allowed my grinto be lit,

for letting you in when your kiss tasted guilty.

For those nightsI was only the soot of my words,all folding and swearingthat love existsin the smoke

you left behind.



the spaces between love and lust.

I wonder what it’s like to make love.

My sex has always been about forgetting, about seeing someone else's’ face glowing in my

lovers’ eyes. I sleep curled over into my own elbows and knees, quietly lost in my ownthoughts. My body has never been a temple; I pick up my own pieces from the corners of the bedposts, sweep my salt from the sheets. I grasp out for bodies in the dark, even when Ican’t see. I forgot long ago that love might lie complacent in the gasps of breath, the way ourbodies writhe in and out like the tide. No, I only know emptiness and sleepless nights inshared beds.

These are things I am far from proud of. I know there are things I should not do.Sometimes, when it’s late enough, I feel shame in the back of my chest, in the corners of my stomach. But this is far from black and white, these are things I don’t know how to make

sense of. The blood in my veins has always been louder than logic. I know this.

But someday, I want to know what lies underneath that. I believe in the way our hearts must be aching inside our ribs, that there are veins carrying soul all the way down to the placesour bodies collapse into each other. Can you make my voicebox stop seizing up? Will I stillbe beautiful after, then? I’ve seen sunrises on mornings that left me more like an endingthan a new beginning, when his breath felt guilty….surely someday ill make love like I makefresh starts. It has to exist.

So will I ever feel adoration in my stomach as strong as the lust? I am twenty years old, but

my eyes are already so goddamn ancient, like this world already taught me too much.Somewhere buried in my clavicle, I know that sex wasn’t meant to feel like losing myself. I

don’t want to give away any more pieces of my pain to boys who will never believe in the woman they are sleeping next to.

Creation is waiting; my body is calling. Somewhere, there is space between fucking andloving. I will never stop searching for more.



green.

i didn’t mean to make such a fuss, really- it’s just that your eyes were such a brilliant shadeof green.

when i looked in them, i forgot that i lived in a campus of brick and stone-cold glances, andi almost believed that the world was still that lush. like something was growing, weeds or

roses or vines, the kind that wrap around you, just like my arms- or they would, if you let me. curling into you bravely, until your blood became mine. growing in, not up, forestsbursting beneath or skin.

i wanted to be that green, but i always came up a few shades off. i was moss rotting, somenights, spreading across the ground; always stepped on and peeled up in layers. othernights, i was the collapsing currents of the wildcat creek outside my house. deep, but running- always emptying out, like my leaking thoughts. yeah, darling, there are so many shades of green. the white green of certain flowers, or people after they die. jealous green,sick green. i’m a different hue every day, really. sometimes, i even like it that way. perhaps

that’s the worst thing of all.

it was a long time before i learned that my pale colors were breaking, not blooming. yourtouch still startled the life out of me, back then. the first kiss was a shot of adrenalinestraight into my ribs, and i never quite mended the cracks of my sternum. i still touch theopen wound sometimes, proud of my miniature grand canyon of bone. at least something inme is still fragile, still soft. being human means letting ourselves open up. we let the waterpour out and pour in.

my fingers ran over that ribcage so well, i could almost forget it was mine. like a pianist

writing her opus prime, and praying to god that each note spoke. like the dizzy braille of my goosebumps that last night he kissed me. when they said love was blind, i never thought it

would be about reading my skin, clammy and cold, when i couldn’t even read signs he wasleaving.

but there are things we forget, after all. we learn to cling to the tiniest things, shards of glassmistaken for hope. a bouquet of reasons love might still exist. but even those wilt in time,don’t they? they do.

see, everything fades, if you let it. but sometimes, it fades when you don’t.



orchards.

these are my hands- watch the ways they are moving. Lifelines grasping and growing. makeme into a cup, name me empty. the bulletholes in my ribcage promise that empty is another

word for ready.

but me, i know fear. i know sunrises feel like slit wrists when you watch them from sleeplessnights in shared beds. i’ve always seemed to taste ashes, my skin is not bulletproof, toss meup like a ripple you’d rather forget. i would rather forget.

my body grew like an orchard, ripe rounded fruit in all the right ways. write me down asbruise easy. there were too many boys who wanted to pick me. just aching to feast on my flesh. their mouths ground me down, tore me open, rape souls more than wombs.

and i screamed out, i am not a trophy to place on your wall, i am not made of roses, just roselike the dead in your throat. i am dandelion kiss, spread me out like that. more like the

sunlight that streams through windowpanes on mornings you forgot to sleep again. i amstars that tell stories of falling, the

this is not about knowledge. there are many things iʼll never know, like how to navigateheartsongs or how to say thank you. i do not know if my pieces, my sharp edges of pain, willever be tumbled down enough to fit yours.

but i do know there is miracle here. I am finally learning that some boys will plant morethan they pick, that some dreams can be read in laugh lines and creases. when he looked at me i thought earthquake and gardens.

and i know that for that one moment, he saw me, all the way down to my appleseed

core. i know hope is a gardener with crinkling eyes. grow up or in but never grow weary. welcome to the orchards. welcome to growing chances, to fruit that tastes a bit like forever.

i welcome my ribcage to hunger. I’ll be the apple if you will be Adam, if sin means getting totouch you. my hands are so empty.

Bite in.



an open apology to my parents.

i wanted to shine so badly for you. for the anxious lines of my mouth to sing loud enough tomake you proud.

this is how i learned to touch the sun. sell my soul to stars in hopes they’d help me. i didn’t know warmth would turn into flame. there is shame in my gut for the things i did. and i’msorry.

mom and dad, i just just wanted to glow. for you to know how bright i was. but instead, icaught fire. started burning. you called me a liar and my gasoline quivered. each emberinside me reached for the sky and prayed to touch god.

instead i touched home with my heart like a fist, beating into us. These are my fathers eyesand my mother's prayers, and the things we still carry in the smalls of our back like ghosts. I

hear them screaming at night, their voices soft shimmering stolen. are you mourning me?how i was burnt up by the sun. I have a voice like a gun, and I never learned how to turnsafety on. i do not need to hear my sin any louder. the powder of my ashes is noisy enough.There is nothing tough about callused hands that cannot hold what they love. i cannot hold

what i love.

mom and dad, I heard you speaking that night. i was weak-kneed and chemical, my sadnessfrozen into dry ice, melted into the air and left remnants of burns. you said i was melting,and maybe you’re right.

but you were wrong when you said the song in my heart did not know God anymore. i amsore with the weight of those empty words. i never stopped believing in heaven. Just learned

that my ribs were the jail bars of hell. mom and dad, there is a devil inside me. this is why ibleed red. don't you dare say you're sorry. I am trying to do better, to teach each rusted-out corner of my hips to sing alleluia.

my lips are building rock-bottom songs that can't save us. I have been burning away, youknow. nothing glowing in my mouth but the embers of us. i trace back to days when I couldtouch my stomach and feel umbilical chords in my belly-button, reminders that a womb wasonce small enough to hold all of my sliced-up self.

but it is not small enough for smoke, for the things i should have never spoke, catastrophestrummed out on my vocal chords. the vibrating stings. this tune is not something to sing to.mom and dad, how much death is inside your stomach? how many skeletons and brokenbones from all those times i should have left alone what was not shattered...no, not yet. my eyes are wet from oceans storming in me. i could not steer my tongue from crashing into

you. there are things i wish i outgrew, and things i didn’t, like the way apologies feel on a windpipe.



i am sorry.

mom and dad, i am sorry. my charred spots have never stopped smoldering. my hands neverlearned how to hold.

but i am holding them out the best i can. do not fill them this time. i am still tracing lines inmy heartbeat. the aluminum of my ribcage is bending again, please come into my chest. youare welcome here.

i have always been your child. your stream of smoke with no windows to air myself out. I amstill learning the difference between fire and starshine. That my spine is not a chimney- It cannot seep out my sorry. i am still learning my veins are not mouths; breaking them open

won’t tell you the things i wish i’d have spoken. my heartbeat cannot pound the truth; my aorta is not heaven’s gates. and i hate all the things my vocal chords pounded when my body didn’t. but me? i was forest fire. could only destroy. these are lessons in how to catch, to

hold.

mom and dad, i will never stop smoldering. my clavicle can only burn out.

but we are something worth salvaging. so, instead, help me burn words i never should havesaid.use my flaws for fodder. help me kill disaster, not daughter. you must hear me shaking therust off my bones. feel me shiver shake sweating.

this time i will grow something green. i will melt. this time there’s a phoenix in the wreckage

we felt. i still carry these things i cannot say, but i pray to only breathe origami; each wordfolding in like my elbows and kneecaps. see me learning how to fold? yearning to bend backover myself. I call out for you with words in my joints, creaking. come back. these vertebraeare stronger than the wind in my words, than fire on my tongue.

mom and dad, i am sorry. my chest is still pumping your heartbeats, in and out. i don’t doubt we can kill this. there is ash in our mouths. i would swallow us whole. i would drown on your skin, float in your ribs. my heart writes apologies in blood. pounding on ribcage. let mein.



sister.

They say we look alike, you know-the sea-foam eyes and cheekbones like prayers,always curling up towards home.The welcome pull of our welcome mouths

In photographs, our bodies fade like sunlight spilling in-forgetting where I stop and where you begin.

But the inside of my skin saw it clearer.I know that that the your liningis starshine-even when mine is stone.I live aloneand drowning in the river of my veins,but you steer sailboats through our blood.

You smile stars instead of mud, washing up in the tides our gaze creates. You swing from the vines of our lifelines.

No, sister, you do not look like me.I did not give you my spiderweb spine.

You will never find solace in switchblades,or ache to release the hummingbirdin your ribs.My cells are not yours-

the ache or the storm-and I thank god for that.

When you were born, your gaze was already open,

choking on the world even then.I was nine, and your eyes were already more bluethan my soul.

Eleven years later

I catch your tears like sugarcane;I gather them in the small of my backto water my windpipe, so the wordscan slide through-

spilling how perfect you are.My thank you’sspelled out in your smile.



Last night when I was lifeless, you crawled through my ribcageand into my arms.giggle into my clavicle.I am still saying thank you.

your laugh swallows mountainsand teaches my bruises to hatch.

Sister, how could I tell youmy xylophone laughter

is forged from your music-that God is growingin the heartsongs I ground intomy mother's umbilical cord.I always knew they'd look better on you.

Life always looks better on you.



september nights in Indiana.

exhausted and scarred,i kissed you like raindrops kiss windowpanes,racing like heartbeats

we didn’t know we had.

we touch each otherlike godi no longer believe in.



tiny: the art of becoming your blood.

you told me that lovewas about being small-

becoming a blood cell kicking inside my veins,or a seed spreading roots in my ribs.

you shrunk yourself downand climbed through my pores;asked my lifelines for answersand dove into my veins.

when my blood became currentsto push you away,

you learned how to fight.

when you swam into my ribs,

you swore that you only found sand. each grain of me promised that shrinking is not the only way to be small.



spiderwebs.

It was one of those nights where the clouds taste like cinnamonand your eyelids are heavy with dew;And the fireflies cried

when you caught them.

My fingertips were tracing spiderwebsoutlined by the evening sky.I fell in love with their silhouettes-the way the silk lines hesitated,so strongto be so delicate.I couldn't bear to break them.

When you kissed me I thought the world was ending. venom’s sweet sinking into my veins.I dreamt of being kissed again;finding a sun inside my heart.

This night is a kiss of the wildest sort.A kiss made of lifeand airand breathing in;a kiss without a boy or lips

just wind and sky and bones.

& in that moment I knew I was stronger.My hair was made of spiderwebs,my eyes the spiders, waiting.Glistening with light and hunger.

Nothing is breakable here.Not the sky.

Not the sun.not myself.



phoenix.

sometimes I think we are born againand die againa million times, and not just once.The skin flakes off in dust-stained layers,

hair falling out in clumpsblood pump, bleed out, bleed in;cellular recycleevery damn day.

our fragile phoenix hearts rejoice.our bodies, minds were kissing.

We were crying out;seeping salt and water

and dreams.I was growing wide in your arms this timeand you didn't know how to stop me.

I remember, yes, I could not forget.The anxious steps-caked in mudand good intentions-up into my heart.there's blood sacrifice in every culture, isn't there?

and it's all in the name of love.

I loved you, even then,but I was so smalland youngand glowing.

sometimes, you have to die in someone's arms before you can live;I am living in yours,

in you.



an open apology to my sisters.

i’m sorry, you know,for the way I gave you my spiderweb spine-the way my cells became yours,each one pounding through your bloodstream

that storms instead of trickles- will you, too, find solace in switchblades,hoping to release the hummingbird beatinginside your ribs?Do insects crawl down your spine?I feel them, some nights,

when my knees are creased inwardslike the lines of our lips.They crawl across hipsof our bodies, our battles

fought with white-knuckled laughter.

I have heard your voice ringingthrough walls.



twelve.

i was twelve years old the first time i found god in a kitchen knife.

they said i was young, then. like this war inside of me wasn’t anything worth saving. likemaybe my bones were too small to break. giggling growing up crooked spine, like the

problem was mine and not theirs. they said i was a child, and no, i did not know pain.

i was ancient back then, with my cataract eyes always begging them to hear me, beggingthem to save me. my hand was a white flag on my heartbeat’s battlefield. i did not come out alive.

i’ll never forget what i etched in my wrists. on the inside of thighs, to the red lines on my stomach that faded to white, like i was trying to write a love-letter to life in my bloodseeping out. told the switchblade to save me. told the metal to teach me how to turn my paininto prayers.

but it never answered. it never answers. these holes are holy in silence, and silence alone.

instead, my scars became canyons i could touch at night, the ridges caving in. this war left me shell-shocked. i wore bruises like bandages, wore myself down in the name of release.clean sharp perfect, and i just couldn’t seem to stop screaming.

eight years later, i’m still wearing those marks like jewelry.

and they still stare me down like i’m made of disease, like at thirteen the mistake was only

mine. like all those years i spent slicing skin was a phase, nothing more. i gave up so muchfor the way i loved metal, who the hell would choose this? eight years of surrender. don’t you

dare call this fate.

but i want you to know that i’m stronger, these days. i’m no longer captivated and captive toswitchblades, singing scars. there is glory, here. i wrote my story in blood, but i’m turningthe page.

my voicebox is still chattering behind my teeth, promising to stop shattering beneath my own weight. it says, metal is not safety, you are better than this. a cut is not a kiss. this is

healing, now. it was so easy to forget that my skin is meant to be soft. that the blade isnothing to worship. the war is not over, but i’m winning, these days. welcome to breathing,to growing back skin, learning how to begin. this is my life, now, and i intend to dive in.

and i need you to know that i did this alone. you did not show me home, and i’m not sayingsorry. i was only twelve, and you should have saved me. but maybe it’s better this way.because watch- i am saving myself.



underbellies.

In soft underbellies, words can growOr children, dripping dry-the umbilical cord was waiting, then,to spill forth fate

and make us grow-And we grow upOr downOr in.I cursed the whisperingsOf that cord,The placental bloodThat became mine.



dirty prayers in a sterile hospital ward.

You have buried meaning under your claims that doctor means filthy, means eyes green withmoney and bitter and cold. Say healthcare means trying to steal from the hurting and maketheir wounds deeper.

But you forget that I was always my father’s daughter.

When I was six, a hospital felt like heaven- all white and glimmering, a place you could besaved.I would beg my father to take me on rounds with him. Him, in his faded blue jeans andfishing tee shirts, and me in my braids; our smiles and eyes that labeled us family. The way they were always open, laughing and wide like outstretched arms, saying you are welcomehere. Saying this is all I have, let me help you.

You forget that these damp dark circles under my eyes, these are his. They adorn his face at

three am when he wakes in sheets that twist like bones of a six year old boy colliding withheadlights turned off, like the lights in his eyes that turn off with the redlines. you say my blood is so red, and forget that we share this. from all the days i watched the red on his lab-coat, watched the two am mornings and the busy fingers, how he asked me to pray for thepeople- like our words could touch them like jesus.

I spent my saturdays in the doctor’s lounge, laughing with men five times my age. I wonderif I reminded them of their own daughters, the ones they so rarely got to see anymore. Iknow how this feels. my father did not have room for me in the caverns of his mind wherehe stores his prayers for the two month old infant dying in an incubator. His heart is not

sterile, but it’s beating so fast. He wanted to save them. Like he loved them the same way heloved me.

There is a type of magic, here, in the stillness of oaths. Each cell works together to create a whole. He would sell his whole heart if it meant he could fix this. You think this is shallow?no. there is love here. Put your ears to it and listen. Hear our muscles grinding into eachothers like prayers.

You say that our world is falling to shreds, and maybe it is- but in my household, doctormeant stitching things up.



the things i won’t tell you.

They call this growing upbrilliant,but they make you believe that brilliance means shining.For me, brilliance meant burial,

the layers of silt and soot became mothersto cradle me under their arms.For me, growing upand brilliancemeant dying.And I wondered if my mother would,could build a shrineto the way my eyes didn't gloss anymore.I never told her what the other girls said.but I don’t have words

or sinsor life.



hibernation.

it’s like mold in the floorboards,the attic damp and sickenedfrom the spots i collected dust.it’s the first noose i tied,

like an umbilical chord you can never cut clean.this is how my cicada heartbeat learned to stop purring;found hibernation in my ribcage.i have only ever loved the freshness of snow,metal kissing concrete,lipstick stains like scars.this is the spot i unzip my skin.

touch here.use veins like outlines,skipping pebbles down my surface-devour my dust.

teach me how to wash clean.



last rainfall.

I flayed my lungs out and asked you to touch them;outlined my body in veins.Remember the first time I stopped breathing?

I kissed you like autumn, all the wind in my bonesstill howls your name.I believe in you, still.

You are the spot I unzip my soul.The cicada of my heartbeat is screaming again,trying to peel off its skin.I’d molt the world-if you let me.

Sometimes I dream of connecting my wordslike dotsuntil they bleed together-but salvationnevercomes.



rising.

woman,they named her-her oh’s rippingand round,

stretching scarsas they grow.

He still gnaws at her backbone some nights-turning her face to a blood-blanket sky,and her eyes, they are starlessagain.

She knows that being a womanmeans to be ripped without thought.

Knows there is pain rotting placentathat makes this a home;torn umbilical chordsand all the chords she won’t sing.

buried deep in her bloodshe still speaks-

Woman, she says,means boiling distrust

in the bowl of my ribcage,asking men to devour

my pieces.They did. They will.

The next time you touch her,tear her open like bread.knead the dough of her breasts,

watch the yeast of her lips-

let her rise.



ice.

I can’t love you up close like this.I’ve written too many love poemsin my skinfor this.

You’re too warm when you touch me- your hands touching shadows,my ribcage still rattling bones.singing the space betweensilence andbeing alone.

I’m too numbto be meltedalive.



naked.

when we make love, remember what nakedness means;that collarbones, breasts are only bicycle locks

for the heartbeats beneath.

i am asking this, not just as a lover,but as a woman

with too many fingerprints, like cigarettesto skin.

i know that being feminine means to be ripped without thought, your worth but an echo in the mouths of men.there have been too many days with my hands against bedposts,

lungs against concrete-i have rubbed myself raw with the friction of those

who didn't see me when the lights, like hormones, weren't turned on.

this is the spot i won't let you reside.no. our tangled limbs and our noises

will not be so empty-

through swollen sore throats, i will demand your attention.

when our bodies are kissing, lip-locked fingerprint seizures,when my hips are pressed into yours:

read the braille of my backboneand notice my hands, white flags or fists,and your fingertips.i dare you to listen

when it's only heartbeats exposed-

when naked means givingour whole selves

in the sheets.



permanent.

i wanted to be permanent, and that scared me the most.

see, i am not the type to jump into things. i have always stayed so quiet, terrified of belonging or claiming to belong. my own ribs are so hard, like if i love you they might melt,

seep my blood on the tile and not know how to soak it back up. i know there’s fire in my pulse, and i can’t let something so beautiful burn. I don’t want my veins to tangle around

your neck, my sadness dripping through them until i become your noose. i have only everloved things that i knew i would lose.

i craved his arms around me more than his lips, as if his body was enough to hold metogether, as if his ribcage tasted like home.

but i tasted sparks when i spoke your name. i’ve been collecting your words and wearingthem like jewelry, frantically trying to polish my rust-stains into stars. you are firefall,

burning my hands as i catch you.

i am learning that touching you means i’m capable of being touched.

but there is danger, here, when fingers graze souls instead of skin. you have made me toofragile. dust is already broken- glass breaks. i will break. you will leave me in the morning

with your blood in my mouth, the caesura of bedsheets curled around naked limbs. i willnot stop you. i know i am hardly human at all, and you deserve to live.

i shivered, that night, when you touched me. there is no backing out. this is the art of

reading goosebumps like braille, the art of ignoring their warnings. this is the art of beingbreakable.

and love is the art of missing you before you’re even gone.

birds.

I am tired of hipbones,bone-basket birds wailingat the sunset.

I have touched my own soul



through translucent skin,prayed for worththat never came.

My body was not empty, once.My ribs were not yet caverns,caving into the fossil

my heartbeat became.

This is a soul, exposed:no more skin to hidethe stains,

just broken glass ribsand wailing birds.



577.

i can only write after 3 am, when the ceiling tanglesthe tileslike fingers to scalp.

i wish you'd miscarried me.

i carry my own corpselike a porcelain doll.



new years.

this is the waiting room, the orphanage.iʼm still here,and i will kiss my

own wounds at midnight-their lips are open sores,

sore throatscaving infrom words i did not dare to speak.

when the ball drops,i always wish it would shatter.

i will not miss this year.

just you.



an open letter to my rapist.

Fourteen months later,there are still nights I taste you.still feel your whole body indented in mine;

I still touch the holesand each anxious red line

where you carved hate through my soul; where you stole away heartbeatsto make room for pain.I still wake up shaking,bedsheets all salt-stainedfrom 3-am nightmares of your handson my skin.

I still shiver when touched. Your sin is still staring me down.

I've been aching to ask you,are you storing my heartbeat?Do you still keep what you stole,pocketed, rottingin the basement of your soul?Because trust me, I am still carrying

you.

Did you think I’d forget?

no, my ribcage still knows you-how you took all my no’sand reclaimed them as yours.

Your scent is still staining my nose.

That October, my body was battlefield red. you raped hope from my stomach;my wrists kissing pavement, lungs kissing concrete.

No, you cannot touch here. No.I tasted the ash of my innocence.

But that is not what I came here to tell you.No.



I am writing like lifelines,like words are my pulse,to say my heart is still beating-that I am still beating you.

that I’m still standing, not silent.That I don’t feel used up

and dirty, these days,bruised up from your body in mine.

I am healing, these days.My pieces are sealing,finding peace in the momentsI find what’s intact;all these things you can’t steal.like my eyes that still open,and how I'm breathing in life.

fourteen months and twenty-four dayssince you broke open my body,ripped open my screams and touched flesh-but not souland not heartbeat.

No, you cannot take or own this.No, you cannot touch here.



544.

i wish i could define myself in dirt under well-manicured fingernails,hand-me-downs and bloodstains;pretending to feel guilty.

if you unzipped my chest,there would be no flowers-only dead languages,monuments writing

what i’m still too scared to say.



in minor.

our hips were hurricanescrashing into shore,damp beautiful bruises.our only language:

sin.

i never stopped writing love songs, just started singing different chords.



umbilical discord.

I wanted to exist in the spots you couldn't see me;in the moments betweeninhale and forgotten exhale.

I folded my shoulders, my wrists, my kneecaps-collapsing into myself and away from your rage.I knew you could not see daughter, just stain.

and you are screaming again.Think red lights and stop-signsand the sky before it storms.Think ripped-out placentaand hurricane

breath.

Judgmental glances become your God. When the bitterness stings your breath, when the words escape,do you call it a prayer?

My knees are still bent and battlefield red.

I pray to never become like you.



eden, revisited.

if i could separate my legslike atoms,call my lust Eve,

would you love me?

would you kiss me goodnight? would i stain you?

i wanted to write more than blood.i forget how to write more than blood.



543.

i am dandelion kisses and vodka stains,that spot the sun kisses the dirt just right-that's love.

my hipbones tumble downinto stones,and wristsbecome gods of forgiveness.the trauma fades,in time.

the doctor saysmy veins are rivers;i promise to always keep running

towardshome.



to the girls who wouldn't let me sit with them at lunch:

i know you probably forgot my name long ago.after all, i was just another unnamed country, an unfinished problem,a signature in the behavior log.

but i was always so good at remembering.eleven years later, these parts are still yours:the purple bruised circlesbeneath my eyes,the whitened scars on my upper arms.my silence.

it took years of watering my wastelandfor me to regrow my backbone-for my skin to seal shut.

and now, we are twenty one years of gardens.my heartbeat grew strongerfrom the years you threw it down;my badlands are blooming-

are yours?



waiting room.

the last time you kissed me,i didn't taste the ash.things like thisbecome search parties-

like the first taste of salt when you find the oceani've been trying to drown in.

we always miss what matters most.

there's no heroics in muscle memory.

i've read too many waiting-room magazines with some bitch on the covergrinning for the camera.

i wanted to rip up the pages, wanted her to swallow me whole.

the doctor spills questionslike yesterday's vodka.i only speak dead languagesand numbers:sixty four days and two chipped nails,seventeen bruises to forget to mention,two eyes kissing linoleum floor.

this ache in my chest isn't medicalanymore.

you got a couple months with bodies blooming.i got a bottle of pillsand doctors who won't let mego home.

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