:this is not a poem it’s a warning label
— there is no title because titles are for books that finish —
the ceiling coughs again // someone’s frying onions downstairs / or burning memory — hard to tell these days
(i asked my mother when she stopped praying: she said when the gods started charging rent for miracles)
a phone rings in the other room. no one answers. we like it better that way. dial tone is a kind of lullaby.
[insert photo of a boy] caption: “he was always smiling” scroll like like forget
some girl on the train carves her name into the seat with a compass so the plastic remembers her longer than people do
&&& my friend says trauma’s a currency now everyone’s broke but showing off receipts
what do you call a country that loves statues more than breathing children?
this isn’t poetry it’s graffiti on the inside of your ribs written in coughs erased by hunger
(come closer)
there’s a final line here but it refuses to arrive.
[things i can’t put in my résumé]
— 2013: i learn silence is a second language. fluent by 15.
— afternoons smell like chalkdust + disappointment. my school says god made us equal. my lunchbox says otherwise.
— i google “how to disappear without dying.” clear search history. do it again.
once a boy called me “poet.” i haven’t written since. the compliment was too sharp.
my grandmother’s hands were maps but no one read them. she died with directions to somewhere we can’t afford to go.
[intermission: your mother’s voice, off-key, singing to the gas stove.]
i tried therapy once. she asked “what brings you here?” i said: “my legs.” we both laughed. then we never met again.
sometimes i hold my breath at traffic lights just to see if i still want it back.
— i’ve been the secret. — i’ve been the one told the secret. — i’ve never been the one safe enough to be honest.
a girl wrote “u up?” at 3:47 a.m. i replied: “no.” she said: “same.” we haven’t spoken since.
add to experience:
eating alone in public
crying in the shower but poetically
becoming someone else’s ‘almost’
references available on request. but they all moved cities.