A poem written for religion class last night at 11PM

Three Things I Know to be True

Capturing moments never used to be so easy.
It hadn't always been the single tap of a finger,
the single click of a shutter,
the single download to a computer.
It hadn't always been in color, 
been available to the whole world,
or been available at any moment.

Grandpa Richard took his cameras to 
the second world war and when asked about his age
he lied.
He learned about war right side up
and about death left side down
because nothing is ever clear at sixteen.
His large hands, not yet worn and not yet leathered,
took black and white shots
while real shots were taken too
and death screamed as his idea
of liberty changed.

He met a girl after the war
through his cousin's sister
and they went to silent movies
and made up lines themselves
and his black and white leather hands
now fit in hers.

Neither went to college,
but learned about love instead,
and moved to California and had
a screaming son with wavy hair
just like leather-handed Dad's.
The screaming son loved adventure 
and drove the after-war girl crazy
but love and family is crazy anyway.

They moved to a house with ivy climbing
up the walls and with
thirty steps climbing up the terrace to
their new castle.
The baby girls were welcomed, the oldest
loving books and loving quiet and the other
yearning to capture moments like
her father had before her.

His leather hands now drove trucks
because fathers will do anything for their 
children and he no longer lied because
he no longer had to.
And the mom worked late,
typing on typewriters until her 
fingertips needed kissing more than
her lips but her leather-handed man 
kissed both anyway because he had learned
that love is free.

Separating light from dark
in chemicals up to his elbows 
was no longer practical,
was no longer a priority,
but he made room for it anyway
and taught his screaming son,
reading girl, and yearning daughter
the art of memories
because those are always free too.

War had taught the leather-handed man 
that the only inevitable things in life
are death and age so he wasn't too surprised
when his kids grew up and had kids
as well so he taught them 
the gift of light too and the gift of art
so that when age caught up to him
they would have his memories
and all the best things in life
would be free.

Capturing Moments

Ring Ceremony Speech

I want to paint a picture of you with my words.
Maybe that would release you from the confines of my mind.
You’ve grabbed a handful of crayons 
and you’re coloring all of my white walls closing in my heart
while I just stand back and watch.
I never asked to be a rainbow.

You never asked me if I wanted this –
you just held out your hand and led me into the deep end,
forgetting you never taught me how to swim.
I’m tired of treading water.
It’s hard to learn to swim when you start to drown.
Now the indigos and browns of the mossy deep end
wrap their tentacles around me and hold me close
in what should be your lover’s embrace.
But you’re at the surface, shouting at me to kick harder,
to swim faster, to be stronger.

What happened to words just being black or white?
There is no fine line to draw,
the definitions of your face are tenuous at best.
And there is no boundary to cross because there’s really none at all.
You’ve never drawn inside of the lines
but I don’t know how not to.

I paint my faces white and my hair brown and with clothes on.
Your faces -- they have no hair and abstract is your middle name.
I don’t know how to capture you.
You’ve always been more of an idea than a proper noun.

I don’t know how to love you.
I don’t know how to look you in the eye
when you wrap your hand with mine.
Shy and ashamed aren’t really synonyms,
but they work just fine in the end.

You don’t know how to love me.
I’m full to brim with double negatives,
with a hundred yes’s and even more no’s.
I don’t know the difference between bent and straight.
I’m colorblind to your rainbow, but you won’t
show me the colors.

Every day I wake up without you
and every day I miss you that much more.
I miss you like a sailor longs for his siren,
I know you’ll drag me to the bottom of the ocean,
and I can’t help but hope that every once in a while
you’ll bring me up for some air.

Because you see, I’ve always known that I will
drown alone.
You’ll swim off and find another girl to entrance.
She’ll fall under your spell too.
It’s much easier to be in love with an idea
than a proper noun.


The Deep End

Dreamer

Ne Me Quitte Pas

The moon is slowly turning further and further away from the earth.
What used to hold it so close to us in a gravitational embrace
is now repelling it and pushing the moon into the depths
of unknown space.
Someday there will be no tides.
There will be no water to try and kiss the sand,
to hide and then uncover the dirty feet of children.
There will be no broken shells washed up to be pieced back together –
there will be no crabs scrambling for cover
for fear of being washed away,
for fear of being erased.
We’ll see sandcastles being destroyed at the hands of man
rather than by the crashing waves of the sea.

So let’s forget for all that can be forgotten.
If even the moon is only temporary
and will be gone in the blink of time –
if the light of stars is only a far off dream
of those already departed –
if constellations are tenuous and constantly fading –
let’s make our own map of the world.
Let’s build our own moon.
Let’s create our own sky.

Nothing is permanent.
Maybe not even love.
But I still want to try.
I want to discover the creases in your hands
and the valley of the top of your lips.
I want to connect your freckles and tell you
that there is more than this,
even if there isn’t.

Well, most days I can hardly speak English.
I can barely cradle words in my palms and try to give them meaning, 
try to give them life and breath and the ability to soar.
Some days, the only words that have any sense of tangibility
are foreign.
So, 
Ne me quitte pas.
Don’t leave me.
Don’t leave me alone.


Ne Me Quitte Pas

Your hands are shaking as they run over the flatness of my stomach,
water licking a parched throat,
rain caressing the desert sands,
stupid clichés forced together,
a bandaid over ugly words,
don’t let that blood show.

It often feels like we’ve run out of original ways to say
I love you.
Overly played and written in novels and movies, 
we’ve become desensitized to romance,
girls expecting their first “love” to be their
forever love –
a necessary difference not too many people see.

A boy’s hand up your shirt means he likes you.
Down your pants, he likes you a lot.
Inside you, well,
that has to be love.

She has a great personality often receives an over worn sigh.
We’ve all heard that one before.
It’s code for she has a big nose 
or her laugh will make your insides cringe 
or there’s not much there.
Physically, y’know?

Actually, I don’t know.
Why don’t you show me?

Trace the freckles on my face instead of the whiteness between my legs;
map out the constellations surrounding my eyes,
and create some folklore for us to hold on to
when there’s nothing left to stop our free fall.

Falling in love, another cliché,
head over heels they say –
I want to fall heels over head with you.
Let’s do things backwards.
Memorize the life line on my palm
before you become my love line.
Crack open my ribs and feel my heart fluttering in my chest
before you have the courage to break it.

After the Big Bang set everything into motion,
humans evolved over billions of years from what used to be stardust.
Intangible stardust. 
We are a collaboration of everything before us
and we determine everything after us –
it’s all connected.
The atoms that fill your skin fill mine,
the ocean that is your blood mirrors all of ours.

And while we’ve come to believe that none of this matters,
that we can screw up as many times as we want,
every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Stardust.
Matter can be neither created nor destroyed,
but every choice you make recycles through the lives of others,
replenishes and takes away,
grants and robs,
everything has a purpose.

So while we sit here filling our tongues with words already written,
mouths weighed by unoriginal truths,
I love you 
shouldn’t have changed.
We’re constantly evolving,
but don’t forget that progress
for the sake of progress
creates unnecessary ripple effects.
So don’t throw your stones in the lake before you know
which way you want the tide to turn.

Every action matters.
Everything is in motion,
often set by a series of
I love you.
Stardust.


Stardust

When they first picked the fruit from the garden,
held it to their lips and proclaimed
that equality between man and God was “good” –
When brother struck brother and blood
covered the shame of nakedness –
when floods rushed to wash the people clean, 
baptize them over again –
when humanity tried to re-begin–

When I screamed my way into life, 
kicking and crying, naked and unashamed,
already loved –
when my mother proclaimed me as good,
when my dad counted my fingers and toes to see if I 
was perfect,
well, maybe not perfect, but pure –
it’s all been working up to this.

When Daniel held his ground in the lion’s den,
when trusting in the free fall brought God’s people
to their feet –
faith is an endless ladder.
The rungs keep multiplying until their arms
outstretch infinity.

If only it were so easy to thrust myself from that ledge
and know that God would catch me whenever I fell –
which would be often, because while pure,
we are never perfect.
We fill our minds with stories passed down through time,
weathered like the fingers who trace its pages,
looking for the truth among caves of metaphors,
searching for guidance when lacking the strength to go on.

And yet, the sun always rises.
Thank God.

And with these stories, we’re emboldened,
enlightened,
shown the way through the mistakes of others,
the truth through words passed on, 
the life through things unseen.

They say that courage is not the absence of fear,
but the mastery of it,
and God, am I scared.
I look out and see so much pain,
some my own, and know that the ladder of faith
hasn’t been climbed by me yet,
and maybe never will.

But the sun still rises and I do not feel ashamed
of the nakedness of my soul.
Rather, the words of others bring the remnants 
of my bravery out so that I might stand
for a while still.

Everything has a beginning,
and everything has an end.
And in the beginning, it was good.


It Was Good

Charlotte hasn’t eaten in three days,
her body waning like tree branches and swaying in the wind.
When I ask her how she ended up here,
she hands me a manufactured smile. 
Says she was here just two weeks ago 
and has returned more –
I don’t tell her I still have not gotten away from the
idea of killing myself.
I don’t have to say anything.

 On the first day, the girl from down the sterile, while hall 
whispers in Charlotte’s ear that she is beautiful.
Charlotte’s face turns red like the sun, tiny fists slamming on the table,
a child’s tantrum.
The girl from down the hall won’t take it back and 
Charlotte is crying like she’s being bullied— 
I wonder if I hated myself that much when I was thirteen,
A “can’t gaze in the mirror” kind of hatred.

 And Charlotte - she is so beautiful – 
I want to wrap her in my bone marrow 
so no one can get to her,
let the burgundy inside me teach her about desire,
and how she owns it.
I want to take her by those bony shoulders,
shake her from side to side, scream that she’s way too young 
for this.
Charlotte is like the little sister I never had and never wanted.

On the second night we lay in our beds,
giggling like preteens at a slumber party. 
When the nurse on shift does head checks,
she peers in and frowns,
tells us to shut up the hell up
so we laugh some more. 

On the third night Charlotte never comes to bed.
I can hear her arguing with the nurses,
they’re shouting, “It’s been three days, Charlotte! Just have some water.”
And she is screaming,
the hospital halls vibrating in pain, echoing her breaths;
I can hear her empty stomach and I need to save her. 
But they won’t let me leave my room.
They won’t let me leave my cold bed.
My strait-jacket sheets.

But she won’t drink the water, 
won’t take her medication.
Says she took 15 Motrin and she doesn’t know why.
But now Charlotte is here and she isn’t eating.
Her panic rests on my chest when she cries into me 
We lay hand in hand,
fingers crossed like broken promises,
her tears are an ocean on my shirt,
salty and silent.

We are both in hysterical silence – 
and I never see her again. 
I hope with every ounce of my being she is still alive 
and I pray with every pound of my soul Charlotte knows she is beautiful.


Skin and Bone Marrow

I.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines
the act of quoting the Merriam-Webster dictionary as
“the most annoying literary trope ever invented”
but I am an English major.
I eat dictionary definitions from a cereal bowl,
balance synonyms in my spoon,
let the milk wash away too many clichés.
I self-medicate with the taste of words in my mouth,
I write odes to punctuation marks
whenever my watch isn’t running out of time.
And when you said you loved me
I wished I had brought my thesaurus
so I could look up a better way to say
“I’m sorry.”

II.
There are sixteen entries in Roget’s Thesaurus for 
“apology.”
I would list them all
but no words fill up what we are
because you can’t fit
“I’m sorry I don’t love you,”
“I’m sorry you weren’t good enough,”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t fall for you,”
into the letters of the alphabet.
Our story deserves so much more than that.

III.
I could try to write us like a novel,
sketch your story into mine,
let our book spines bend together.
But our plot lines got derailed before the rising action;
we were a train I never had the time to catch.
I didn’t mean for our books to close when I started
shutting my eyes and pretending you were him
but suddenly he was on the same page
and you were a chapter behind;
it would be easier to rip through the
ink and paper to say
“I love you”
but I don’t even know if we’re still bound by the same cover.

IV.
My high school English teacher told me that,
when you write,
sometimes you have to kill your darlings.
You have to carve out your favorite words,
cut away the phrases that refuse to fit,
because sometimes the truths are hidden 
under the layers
you try your hardest to build up.
I have scribbled over my skin and scrubbed 
an eraser over my brain 
but no matter how hard I try to rewrite myself,
I cannot figure out how to conjugate the verb “love”
around your pronoun.
I have to let “us” die.

V. 
Semi-colons are used to link two independent clauses –
two sentences that could stand on their own
but were never meant to.
They are the most beautiful form of punctuation,
but they are also the most overused.
Writers are always trying to join together things
that don’t belong.
People are kind of like that too.


Semi-Colon Apologies

I'm a seventeen year old teenager who pretends she can write.

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