The Majestic

Trampled feathers lie on the ground
where the wings of the Majestic once spread;
their greater span reaching the tips of the continents
and warming the slightest complaint.

The Majestic, now naked, shivers under the weight
of the ocean breeze whispering over the mountains.
A pitiful figure, once the queen of the skies,
now hunched with a burden of pain.

Silently, silently, her pride is diminished,
as onlookers ogle the previously omnipotent.
A wonder that such as the Majestic should
fall so terribly and so quickly.

Never to soar, or whip past the rooting birds,
the Majestic weeps with shame, filled with
past wishes and endless regret.
A standard for the world, now burnt.

And as the Majestic crumples, she only
wishes she were a Phoenix.

goodnight you beautiful girl

Typing nonsense to memorize that I'll forget two weeks later.
Working for the grade, working for the numbers.
Always the numbers,
Numbers make sense.
I'm holding a mango flavored popsicle in my hand and I don't have enough time to lick the drips running down the dense, cracking wood of the stick and onto my dry knuckles and flaky skin.
I'll never have the time to make a peanut butter sandwich for a starving child in Africa
or order a pan pizza from Dominos.
I'm running out of seconds in my never-ending tetris game and I'm counting the days until I can stop taking my vitamins. I can feel salty wet under my eyelids but I whisper, Stop. We can't have that. It doesn't fit in our schedule.
 7:20 Drive to school
7:22 Honk at the person who cut in front of you
7:25 Make eye contact with a lamp
7:28 Park
I'm sorry, I can't fit that smile into my schedule.
I'm sorry, I can't fit that boy into my schedule.
I'm sorry, I just simply can't fit you or thoughts of you or anything or any person or any glance or thought or moment into my schedule.

Sometimes I feel like I'm walking into planned nothingness with no ultimate goal or purpose, swimming without water wings and drifting into space without a lifeline, calling for help but gasping for oxygen.
My sternum breaks under the pressure of all the lists stacked on top of me that I've never completed.
Literally I feel like I have a collapsed lung when I see faces of the past in my nightmares.
Last night I dreamt of you and your wonderful touch and your knowing hands. Hands that caressed my face and touched the hollow of my waist and begged me to forgive you. Hands that made bracelets in a weird sort of way and always bought me Roxberry. Your breath in a whisper caught me instantly and suddenly I was in love with a boy who I never see and talk to like he never left when I see him. And all I hear is love, love, love me. And I trip and fall and stumble and never blush. I wish I could blush.
And all the time you are drifting away, still softly humming, "Goodnight you beautiful girl. Goodnight."

Examination

She has a chin with a little cleft in it from her dad and a round nose that hates the constant pinching. She wakes up and smiles at herself in order to prevent any further distortion, but her smile is fake and altered and she only liked it when she had to wear a retainer. He thought the lisp was cute. Her white blood cell count is normal and she always has a temperature of 98.7 degrees, precisely. Her toes bother her and she wishes people noticed her freckles instead of the pouch around her middle that was constantly there, just a little reminder. She loves making lists and goals and schedules but stores them away in a little box for lists instead of completing them. She wants to leave so bad, so bad. Leave and run from the people who make her feel secure because she needs to feel challenged and helpless and humbled. She made this hard to read on purpose. She keeps and hoards everything with meaning. She still has that poem you wrote her in ninth grade that was son wonderfully terrible and she wishes you told her more. She keeps everything she hears about herself and about others and puts them in Manila folders because sometimes she forgets who she is. She has three clocks in her room because she is afraid than one day time will stop and she won't be able to progress. She's afraid of them. Of all of them. Them who point and them who jeer and them who never understood. She's terrified mostly of herself and her impulses and she's worried about becoming a boy. She touches the lockers as she passes by because they hold things that she will never see but they belong to someone and she wants a piece of that belong. She wants a hearty helping of belong served with compliments and a rich dessert filled with love and real friends. She wants carpe diem and hakuna matata and Jane, Jane, Jane. She waits at the same corner every day, watching the same cars, hating the same people, and wishing she could love them the way everyone else does. She, the mortal mess who roamed unconsciously through an honestly grand adventure.

Emotionally, yes.
Physically, no.
My greatest fear? Death like people dying.
My greatest desire?
Don't judge me, because it may indeed be to die.

I hope you're kissing somebody on the Brooklyn Bridge right now.