I think if you needed
surgery the doctors
would cut your insides
and pull out the scalpel
covered in stars

torn out
one by one
until you choke on the luminosity
and stop wishing
on dead illusions in the sky
mother I made a wish tonight

they should have told us when
we were little
the stars have no ears

and these wishes
linger
in the air
swallowed as easily
as they were exhaled

bodies lined with stars
pumping wishes
that only die
when fulfilled

it’s not time to go yet your feet still drags a little with each step maybe the more you walk the more concrete will seep through the soles of your feet and line your heart until it hardens like the calloused fingertips that once stroked your hair until you slept. split your sides open where did your ribs go all I see are daises I thought you stopped swallowing petals for me now you’ll fall and fall and blossom no more

I think you could have been a rose in the next lifetime 

I.

moments come and go like the polite smile given when they say nice to meet you too I wonder who will touch the sky first your hands or mine 

II.

light the world on fire and extinguish it with memories see how many you have to give up to save everyone but don’t choose the ones that hurt the most because then we’ll throw you into the fire too until all memories burn to ashes like the soot smothered across your eyelids did you know that a little bit flickers off each time you blink 

III.

I always thought it was kind of funny how one moment you say you could drown in life’s beauty and at the same time drown in the ugly it makes you think that maybe one day we’ll wake up and it’ll be different even though you know if it won’t but sometimes you can’t help but think about it I think sometimes we all do 

IV. 

have you ever thought that sometimes you were made to see how long you could last before destroying yourself I think some people make it but others weren’t meant to last for quite as long

V.

 I don’t think I meant that last one I promise

so much potential
too bad the mind
is fucked
beyond belief
and none of it is real
that’s the worst part
none of it is real
there’s this shit inside
that never gets out
I don’t know what it is anymore
but it swims
wading through the mind
like a tease
when will you give in
it asks
does this hurt enough
you seem to handle it okay
why don’t I turn it up a notch
and fuck your thoughts
from the inside out
upside down
until you bleed out toxins
shaped like
stars 

I think I’m looking for something but it’s difficult to cure a nostalgia that doesn’t really exist.  There are thoughts that dangle in front of my eyes sometimes and they make my eyelids tired and heavy like nails glued to lashes but I swear they don’t belong to me. They’re visitors, like fireflies that banded together and said they’d change the world but were outshined by city lights.  

Sometimes I think we’re like fireflies— good intentions and capable of being filled with light. But it’s hard to illuminate ourselves all the time, when city lights have always been the poisoned apple of our eyes. 

I went up there the other night and knew I couldn’t do it. I can’t glow right now, but I’m still trying to fly.

I couldn’t fall asleep for a while last night. But I remember thinking that I had to close my eyes in fear that I would taint the 5AM silence— that if my eyes were open the walls would fall flat and time would pause and morning would never come. What a silly thing to imagine— the dark doesn’t care if you’re awake, darling. It’ll leave you in the shadows, teasing the forearm hanging off the edge of the bed with such light and delicacy that every rustle of sheets and creak of mattress feels wrong. Do you dare disturb the darkness, they ask.

You pressed the wrong piano keys, the melody changed.
And the crowd roars.

I want to write something but I fear what words may come out and parts of me fold up and cringe when compiling sentences that sound too _________ but unfortunately the feeling is dominating like cubes of ice passing by fire on the street and forgetting what it means to be frozen so they melt and melt and so these words too they spill they spill they spill like

gas in the pacific and the nations

oh how they scream

I wanted to tell you that the color of your couches was exactly how I had imagined them to be in my head. Sea-foam calm yourself green, against a clean white wall and carpet floor. I wanted to tell you that I couldn’t solve the stupid hand puzzle scramble thing in the waiting room. It was supposed to make the moon and the moon had a face and clouds around it too but some of the pieces were stubborn and stationary like the couches in your office. I never did solve the puzzle or make the picture right but I knew what it was supposed to look like and I guess that’s all that mattered but it wasn’t enough. I don’t think I’ve seen the moon yet today but maybe I will later. I went to the cliffs today and the patrol officer said I had fifteen minutes before he would lock the gate and I nodded and said okay but that wasn’t enough time so I went to the beach too and left when the first star shown in the sky. 

I learned the other day that we’re made up of stardust, something about the mix of elements on Earth that has gas from the big bang and remnants of dead stars.

there’s
something about
these faces can you
explain why everyone’s
unsure don’t stare but
glance five seconds
there’s something
on these faces
that can’t
be there

five
I dreamt
that I could
fly but all the
colors washed
off the houses like
melting crayons
when I found
my way back
home

four
she said
I couldn’t make it
so that night I
broke her
heart and
left

three
a few days
later I think I
started to believe
that maybe she was
right and I didn’t dream
about flying for a while
because I told her
I wouldn’t
try again

two
future
she said
she’s proud
now and maybe
maybe that means
I can try to fly again
but this time it has
to be for myself

one
there’s
something about
these faces can you
explain why everyone’s
unsure don’t stare but
glance five seconds
there’s something
on these faces
that look like
stories

remember when
you tried to fly and
fell harder than you
ever imagined

these faces have
all done the
same

I think it’s easy to forget
how much potential
you held in your hands
as a child

they would say
child of spirit, eyes of hope
when you grow up
you can be anything

at eight I wanted
to be a doctor
until
I figured out
I didn’t like numbers

eight years later
I said maybe a lawyer
but then I sat in court
and wanted to save
everyone

nineteen
and they say
where are you going

they never told us
children of spirits, eyes of hope
your dreams
are time sensitive

but I think we
forgot time is
man made and
you never liked
numbers
anyway

don’t let the
world make you
any smaller
than you think
it has 

because you
I swear you could be anything

they broke you into pieces
spread across the floor

you spotted optimism in the corner
ambition by your feet

pick carefully, they said
take only what you need

so you swallowed all the flaws
down that sore throat

of unsaid words and acid thoughts
I’d like to take these back, you said

they still need a little work

Judgment, denial of second chances, taking an undesirable trait and multiplying by five. I don’t know how to feed nonexistent steroids to nonexistent conceptions that we bring to existence. We are in no position to judge any other individual when we are well aware of our own faults, but that has never stopped human nature. We know when we are capable of better— we know regret remorse guilt compunction penitence and any other array of words that may describe the teasing dance of lowered heads, wrenched and rubbing palms, a bit lip, squeezed skin, tense muscle, the constant pulsating beating blood carrying through your narrow life streams the realization that you could have done differently.  We crave deletes pauses back buttons reverses, but we hesitate to grant such serenity to those that have wronged us. Holding grudges like cherry pits peach pits apricot pits pear pits avocado pits we create a pit in ourselves so when we are destroyed a passion will remain. The human pit is one of anger and vengeance and pain and moments events memories that we spit and stomp at because we cannot come to terms and the fury penetrates the hardened surface as we tear apart invitations for those that have remnants in our pits, forcing them to find vacancy elsewhere. 

And if I get punished for having an open heart, the guard will not go up. It will serve as another example that some will hurt you, some will take advantage of you, some will use you— but it does not mean that they are characterized by their negative actions. People are inherently good. Desirable traits may be concealed and we may struggle and fail to find hints of good in those that we cannot harmonize with, but the presence of good is somewhere in the debris. The antithesis is that all humans are inherently evil and under good remains a rubble of hate, but beliefs do not define truth and they do not come close to answering the unanswerable. Belief —> opinion —> choice. With good, the only place to go is up, until someone breaks you. And when that happens, I dearly hope that you will continue to stare up with faith and the belief that not all will cause damage and crevices and splits. It will not be a fall, but a pause. And if you stare down holding that pit that wears down your stomach and trickles up that spine, I dare you to fly. And with flight and height and ascension, I hope the weight slips and the pit becomes punctured with holes and the interior spills out in rivers of pain and truth but you’ll be flying too quickly to descend. 

Not everyone is going to hurt you. Some will, some will bring you to tears and sleepless nights and a gradual sinking to your knees as you cover your face because all you’ll want is the absence of color and for a while that’s all you’ll believe in— but the blue and the green and the yellow and the vibrance vitality vivacity will soar into those black pupils again and fill them with light. Never lead a life with the fear of being hurt, because although pain is inevitable, resistance can be built. And after that, those that have hurt you and those that have not, become one— beautiful. 

in high school English
they taught us Romeo
Othello
Oedipus

taught us to shake fingers at impulse
that a trusting nature was
classified as naive and
to shake heads at curiosity

they said 
one major flaw lead to
downfall

we never did
read about each other
but aren’t we all in some sense
tragic heroes

maybe we can dig
the flaw
the ticking time bomb
out of our hearts

and save the world 
from each other