TIL

I learned that hispanic women call me "lady" and old women call me "sweetheart,"

to young men I'm "miss" and to old men I'm "young lady"

The lady across the street calls me "darling" and my mom only calls me on weekends

I have a lot of people who call me "friend,"
and a couple who think I'm "the best,"

sometimes I'm "sister" and sometimes I'm "girl,"

When I'm joking I call myself "homie"

and I never really understood when you called me "dude" 

Today I learned that I shrug off the good names, 

shy away from respect,

dance with casual titles and sip raspberry tea with generalities

Today I learned that I'm hiding behind your name

hiding behind a phone call

I think you deserve more.

fast words nonsense and instability

I try to look past the ocean under my surface,
trying to hide it,
it's more than an ocean,
it's waves crashing down on jagged rocks
they can't catch each other,
a spinning whirly-gig that your eyes can't focus on,
my body jittering at such high speeds that it gives the illusion of something
bigger, something stiller,
something solid,
but try to touch and you'll feel nothing but vibration,
your hand slipping through my cheek like
the junior mints in my popcorn
lost until you get to the bottom of it
except there's no container
and it's infinity kernels,
infinity depth,
infinity loss of chocolate mints
and I'm begging you to contain me
but I think you like my chaos,
the angry clouds of dust building in my vision
and pushing me further to a chasm,
pieces of me smeared on the pavement
sidewalk chalk melted by the hose and hot sunshine
I'm so transparent
I'm so unstable
Nobody can hold onto me
because I'm everywhere at once
drowning myself with my own contents
my particles pulsing at an atomic rate
This isn't what you think it is.

time

sometimes I'm pretty sure the world doesn't move fast enough for me

but maybe too fast

feathers aren't enough for these wings

I tried, I tried to tell you

I wasn't meant to live in these conditions

it's not enough

and I can't say everything I want to

canning my feelings like mom's peaches in late august

swimming in light syrup 

every other jar exploding in shards of glass 

under all the heat, all the pressure--

i miss you

butterfly

I guess the best part is the liberation, really, the open-your-arms acceptance of a journey that sends you up, up, upwards--

shooting you up rather than pushing you down, singing between your ears and opening your mouth like cool air. at first the feeling is subtle, a growth that is painful and begs to be dismissed like an itch, but somewhere along the way a switch is turned and your eyes open wider than they did before and you realize the growth is exactly what you're here for, exactly what you've been begging for, the progress you want to see, that you're constantly in a state of change for the better or the worse and

this time,

THIS TIME,

it's for the better and reaching your goals is only half of the satisfaction, the craving for different subsides as you pass through a time that seems a little lighter, more flowers, maybe someone waiting for you as you're breaking through, unraveling your cocoon, trying to lift your wet wings but they're sticking together

and through all this you realize that the breaking through, the lifting, the sticking, it's your strongest moment and you'll never be this strong again, that once it's over you'll be just as fragile as you were when you started, but instead of on the ground you'll be in the air and you'll see things differently--

but here, with your dripping wings and your sore legs you'll realize that you have everything you need to get there, that you've inched yourself here and now it's time, and you'll never be as determined or as strong or as patient as you are in this moment,

waiting,

anticipating,

chasing the sky.