taseouisce

18 years old and I am woven through strings binding me close and close and tight. * for my first months upon months, my mother tells me that I screamed day in, day out I do not know what I protested. Perhaps life was too much too soon perhaps I was testing my parents' love perhaps I was merely uncomfortable with dependency. 16 years ago, how would I fathom that an idea could ever rival the things I touch? I wonder, did I yell to drown out that world or was everything always more than tangible? * short-legged with a fringe of red I stood up in a sandbox and declared my independence. I'm big on the inside, I proclaimed, and kn

We ponder the price tag of being free: How we cross borders and why we cross lines- So second nature now, even when we Try planting flowers and grow only mines. Trusting ourselves, what we hold to be true; Working with others, with faith unsurpassed: In this world of ours, how much can we do To fight for a future, learn from our past. I know that the world won't be saved today I realize my dreams are overrun But I will not let life wither away- I'd rather be doing than be done. I hold this, my creed, throughout darkest night: To help and to learn, to hope and to fight.

Hope is a bird, a small swift feathered thing: It perches there on a ledge in the soul And the ageless, wordless song it does sing Will never cease, nor be muffled at all. Rain and cruel wind makes that sound the more sweet; An unprecedented storm it must be To silence that bird, extinguish the heat That kept many warm, and set their hearts free. I have heard that song in the coldest land, Have caught it on the wind in seas most strange- In forests dark, 'tis a lamp in my hand; It is the one key that unlocks all chains. Yet however much I beg from that bird, It asks for naught, not a crumb, not a word.

somewhere amidst the parallelogram of our bones my heart beats in 2/4 time with yours and I lean closer, into your gravity until I cannot tell whose molecules are whose my dancing fingers scrawl a love poem on your back in the language of you and I

when we were children, we stared up at the night sky and we learned the phases of the moon: waxing, waning, full and new. for some, this was enough. for some, this stole the beauty from the stars and sky, and they turned to other, worldly things. (and this world can be wonderful, but it is finite.) some looked at their moon charts and smiled and they understood: this life is what is here and

he stood there        with broken dreams falling all around him like unfortunate birds        (fragile and feathered) and the look on his face        mirrored my heart and bones                (shocked and hollow) when I held out my hand        I rather thought that it would go right through him        (crooked and true) fingertips inches from his soul        I could only reach and wait                (sad and hopeful)

 i'll trace maps in your skin during sleep-soaked purple nights plotting out the paths of all the places we'll go adventuring while you look at me and tell me you see the stars under my eyelashes bright and clear enough to show us the way and with our starry eyes and our map-inked skin we'll disappear together                 into forever.

i. the sun tiptoed into the sky this morning, and the clouds laughed as they caught fire. perhaps it foreshadowed the events of the day, but as i sat there drinking thick coffee with heavy cream in an attempt to make my eyelids lighter, all i could think about was how beautiful it was. ii. the sun was hidden behind a grey veil in the afternoon, and your seafoam eyes were careless as you said you didn't love me anymore. at least, i thought they were careless at first; but every time i thought about it the emotion changed, so that you pitied me, you laughed at me, you held back tears. the moment was blurred and clear at the same time, burned i

one rises and another falls. one thousand nine hundred and eighty-five resurrections since the birth of christ and self-centered anxiety in a copernican universe, heliocentric panic disorder & it was knuckles and ankles and knees and i couldn't look you in the eye you write a lot of letters to god for an atheist.

it's a grey whale sky today, heavy and immense under which I am crawling slowly sluggish as sap I'm thinking about how difficult you make it to get close to you and stay there and not drift I try to anchor myself but end up like the bare-limbed, still wintering trees standing alone in empty fields, abandoned even by the birds we haven't spoken in three days and my heart lies heavy, heavy in my aching chest, trying to slumber through the cold months to some distant dream of spring while fog rolls across the hills rising and falling with last year's dry grass and I shiver in my coat, wondering when will I see you

the mounting foreboding a cliche, you know walls forever a maze all around and chimney-stack above, sky straight through what good is sickness? what is there to gain? what good is the medicine cabinet if all within is pain? there's a mirror in a mirror and a mirror over that and a clicking shattering shuddering to the blood on your fist.

you braided honeysuckle into my hair and kissed my nose and took the wheel, letting miles and fields and forests dissolve in the haze of hot tarmac. then we crashed into disaster, and i realized that we're not living no, we're waiting: for the day we'll soar high above this all to a place where we don't need to run far (far) away. with flowers in our hair, and desperation in our eyes, we ran away into the night, feeling the chains fall away ( from our broken, broken shoulders ) i could feel your bones under my fingertips and i could feel your pain as we left the only home we ever had, in favor of nothingness. nothing would be worth

i have no heart; i was born a stone, slimed and sopping a baby's hairless skull geode- sic- kening sparkling quartz and amethyst in my chest cavity, flowing with dark water carbon and charcoal and i have strings there, red yarn tied to doves and pigeons metal for guitars splintering and digging split-end tips into cavern walls rubber and feathers craft yarn, polyster anomalies every bird a heart pebbles in your breast they tug and steer me, and i follow them, doves and balloons pulling at the wind in my chest

 there was dust in her hair and dust under her nails and dust behind her ears, dust sticking to her feet and struggling to get past the flimsy paper mask that covered her nose and mouth. dust in every nook and cranny. in the predawn light everything looked stranger than it already was. the piles of rubble and crooked, mutilated street signs became dreamlike and surreal. she wondered, not for the first time, if this really was all just a dream - maybe she would wake with the sun, back in her yellow bedroom in her safe house with her confused, angry, beautifully dysfunctional family. maybe life would be real again. she sighed and twisted the