i always end up writing about hair.

I.

because you believe in
the learning curve of hairstyling
more than an eighty-dollar
cut-and-color,
you take the back of the box too seriously
and don’t let the bleach
touch the skin under my hair.

the girls i want to be
or be like, or be with
dye chunks of their hair blonde.
it’s supposed to look good.

but you care too much about the
health of my scalp
to let me look like a zebra.
so instead, i look like a zebra with
inch-long roots
and a mother who clearly doesn’t know
how catty eighth grade girls can be.


II.

from over the sink
the pile of auburn strands look something like
mistakes, growing growing.
i can feel the buzz of the clippers
in my jaw.

i told you i want this for myself.
that hair is my vanity
and i’d have a lot more time for
God
or plotting against you
if it was gone.

so you said i’d better keep a hat on
when i’m in your house.

but outside
the yarn of my beanie
sticks like velcro to my scalp.
and when it starts to rain
i pull the velcro off
and feel each drop as it smacks me.


III.

the dog’s body warms my feet.
your feet warm my hands
and the lamp on your nightstand
glows the room orange.

you touch your left
eyebrow, cheek, nostril, ear
to show me what you can’t
feel anymore.
then you lift the hair behind your ear
to show me where some man in Novi
will cut in to your head.

you say thank God they’re not shaving
the whole thing.
thank God.
just around the ear where the
long thin hair there
can make believe there was never
a tumor.

excerpt from a letter to the creator.

when i go to sleep, i feel like my stomach is turning slowly inside out. i close my eyes and imagine it is and think i am becoming the type of person i despise.

but with these ducks swarming around me, i'm realizing again that i do care. i do care about these ducks and i am capable of caring about the world.

maybe if i cry every bit of water from my body, it will wash me clean in the way that Jesus' blood used to. maybe faith means crying when it all seems too much and believing that the tears will come back as warm rain. maybe the way to heal is to hug my pain and tell it i am going to do everything i can to change to change you back into love.

i've spent so long believing that love is always soft. and i'm not used to love that stings more than it soothes, so i call it disruption.

graying ears.

like god,
they watch their children grown old
before they do and
lose control of their back legs almost completely.

and when their children become elderly with
graying ears and eyes filmy blue,
and refuse to
eat any food they have to chew,
and when the cancer on his hip is too far into the bone
for the surgery to make much of a difference,
the parents take away the pain
and place their children's ashes on the mantle.

on a friday night.

my mother, my friend Kara, and i stood outside the Chicago theater in october of my sophomore year of high school. it was my first time seeing ani difranco in concert, so i was shivering for several reasons.

uncomfortable with the dyed mohawks and women holding hands around us, my mother made small talk with a woman standing next to her. she appeared to be in her mid 40's, wearing a red windbreaker and toting a clipboard.

when the doors finally opened, my mother said goodbye and we climbed to the nosebleeds for our seats. as the opener finger picked on stage, my mom's hand flew up to her mouth in a gasp.“lindsay,” she said holding a pamphlet, “i think i just gave money to the communist party.”

mass.

so it turns out that crazy isn't the only thing that has been growing in my mother's head.

the powerful, ominous "they" say it's about an inch in diameter and is growing on a nerve that transmits sensation into her face.

how do i comfort the person i'm slowly becoming numb to?

how do i pray for sensation to return when i have been praying so long for thicker skin? i've forgotten what it's like to feel good with her, to feel certain of her love.

so, is my tumor operable? do i let myself feel again? is the same god who put that tumor on her brain stem big enough to take it out of me?

these are questions i should ask my doctor. but i am alone in this.

i need to feel her again.

hanging flowers.

my friends always hangs her flowers from
the tops of doorways. upside down so
the life from the stem
will drain into the colors of the petals.
and like a noose, the tape holds it there.

the air becomes cancer, drying its juices
slowly, though just slowly enough
to give it hope that
water could come somehow, that
my friend could see the cruelty of
slow, beautiful death and
instead place it right-side-up in warm sucrose water.
but flowers that die with promises of living again
wilt and dull and fall apart.

so when the air has finally sucked all
of the wet from each petal, the corpse hangs there still,
the smell of its ghost faint and
swimming around it.

crabbing.

over dinner
she talks about the shooting range
and how she sometimes aims at
targets in the shape of humans.

her husband chimes in.
their joke about swinging targets of terrorists heads
does not make me laugh.
i want to ask her if she knows
what a terrorist is.
i want to ask her how it's any different
from the bombs we drop.
i want to say
listen lady
if you think that shooting at
figures unlike your own
makes you different from people practicing
on targets that look a lot like you
you're mistaken.

but then i remember how
an hour earlier
i pulled red rocks and dungees out of the
ocean in cages and
split their bodies on the
side of a white bucket and
power washed their insides on to the grass.

and i don't say a thing but
could you pass the crab?

transplant poetry.

it comes off in patches.

it's the worst pain i've known
growing into myself.
so many bones broken
from word boulders
shot with hate catapults.
arms tired, muscles aching
trembling from peeling away
layers of expectation
and normal.
it comes off in patches
closer than my skin.
it rips, i bleed
and know that i will heal
in rough patches of scars.
the tissue will trail out
and remind me of the way stars
glittered the night
i asked God to break me--
the darkness where i said:
i don't need you to build me a path,
only let your light guide me
through dense fields of
honesty and invention,
veracity and falsehood
to touch the core of you.
to see the face of God.


---------------------

four.a.m.

I.
in the german language
there are three relative pronouns
der
die and
das—
masculine
feminine and
neutral
(respectively)
and there is no breathing reason
why the moon—der Mond—
is masculine
and the sun—die Sonne—
is feminine
but astronomy tells me:
that the moon shines only by
reflecting light from the sun
that the moon is only visible
because of the sun
that the moon would be just a crater
in the sky
without the sun.
and so it goes.

but
in this death darkness of night
that i’ve lived my whole life
i’ve seen nothing—
nothing!—
but the moon.

the moon wrote its own history
and that of the earth
reflecting shadows of war
(no peace!)
to outshine all the other dingy craters.
but,
the moon doesn’t lend heat
or generate light!
shadows spread longer, stain
the ground at midnight.

but,
what have i gained in
hearing the moon? or
accepting the moon? or
following the moon with my eyes?
nothing.
i have gained hazy alley rape
and retreating murky figures—
nothing.
i have gained gloomy cells housing
prisoners of conscience—
nothing.
i have gained Emmett Till and
Matthew Shepherd’s mangled bodies—
nothing.
i have gained a victim’s interrogation
at her rapist’s trial—

and my chest will hold no remorse
none.
for the moon when it dies.


II.
O, my good fortune!
it’s four a.m. and
in the east
the hovering grey sky dissipates—
the revolution
swirls splatters of purples and yellows
driving it away.

the sun is awake
and the coast is grasping for it,
praying it home
to warm the air.
to illuminate the sky.



---------------------

RomansTwelveTwo

i.
the ongoing struggle between
good and evil, between
god's will and human desire
has taken over my life.
it has consumed me to the point of
looking at a leaf falling
to the ground and
making me wonder
if god wanted that leaf to fall
or if our misuse and destruction of the earth
has so changed the temperature
of the air
that a cold mass
hit a warm mass
that wasn't supposed to exist
and created that tiny wind
and knocked that beautiful leaf
from the branch
god placed it on.

ii.
the reason your stomach feels sick
and you feel like crying
every morning
is because i am not what you want me to be
but i still
Still
always need your love--
Always.

iii.
my favorite bible verse is
romans 12:2, it reads:
do not conform any longer
to the patterns of this world
but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind
and i can't help but wonder
if you could find comfort in this.
that not all the world teaches you
is god's will.
that the beliefs that have been
engraved
in your brain
are wrong
and foolish
to believe that god disapproves of love
because when i lift up my hands
on the floor
alone
in my empty dorm room--
all i feel is love.
on my fingertips
and around each strand of hair
and deep in my bones
and underneath my toenails
because god Is love.

my bed.

you made your bed and now you have to lie in it, she tells me over the phone. it's like the bed is hell, or something.

my bed is a warm pillow i sink into, i say.

we'll see, she says, like her psychic eyes can see the hell that my bed will become. but, she doesn't believe in psychics. she believes in hell. and she believes that beds like mine eventually all go up in flame.

thin paper.

god feels nothing
like thin paper
to me.
god feels like
blankets from the
dryer and
bonfires in summer.
god feels nothing
like thin paper
to me.

before you get there.

after i lost my closest friend, i called my mother to cry. she sighed on the other side and said, i told you not to tell anyone. i told you this would happen. and like the child that i am, i cried some more and stopped calling her regularly.
still, she drove an hour in Michigan slush to buy me a rug and a chair and a lamp to fill the empty space that swallowed all of the warmth in the dorm room. and before she left, she told me, i hope you figure out where you're going before you get there.

how many versions.

sometimes i wake up crying from dreams when i can't draw the line between images formed during REM and real life. i have a reoccurring dream where i see a car crash into a tree. when i run up to the window and look in, the driver is my mother, unmoving, eyes open and staring at me with trails of blood from her temples. the first time i had this dream in middle school, i ran downstairs and into her bed and put my fingers to her wrist until i felt an even pulse. whenever she was running late, i saw flashes of her bloodied face in the dream and called her in a panic to make sure she was still alive.

some days i believe that dreams are actually just portals into other dimensions.

i wonder how many versions of my mother have died in this way. and i wonder how many versions of myself have driven her to choose crashing into a tree over praying for her daughter's soul.

worship.

i have practiced opening my hands to the spirit
and singing praises with my tongue.
i have glowed from the holy ghost
in churches with ceilings like attic spaces.

so maybe it was the walls of the room
slanted up like a steeple
or the blue moon coming in from the window
lighting us up like
angles still blazing from heaven,
but when you were hovering over me
and your skin was warm
i opened my hands
to the god above
and sang hallelujah into your mouth.

tubber ware.

back when she was younger and everything was still good between them, her mother baked nearly every cookie in her recipe book around christmas. she baked for her clients, her friends, and the majority of her extended family. the little girl would try each one of them except the ones she knew contained mint. to her, eating mint flavored things was like eating toothpaste. there were always at least two tubber wares full of cookies in the house for the two weeks before the 25^th.

when the little girl got bigger and went to college and started the painful process of becoming an adult, her family back in that old farm house dropped weight like bowling balls on a diet that entailed eating nothing but fruit one day and nothing but meat the next, and cut out all sugar. when she came back home on a school break, her mother was so skinny from the diet and so tan from the sun-therapy depression treatments that hair and clothing were the only indication of human life. and for the first time ever, there were no christmas cookies in tubber ware.

“things have changed around here,” she said, looking at her brother's slim face and loose pants, noticing the dog's crusted over eye and the way he no longer greeted her at the back door, but rather slept deafly on the couch and, like the rest of the family, looked up sleepily when she showed him she was home.

beard.

when i came home from my trip, you cried and told me you hated my hair. you said you thought i wanted to be a boy. and i won't lie and say that peeing my name into the snow doesn't seem fun, but i told you it was a silly fear. i don't want to be a boy, i said.

i'm doing drag soon. some days i bind because i want to pass, even if i can only fool them before i start talking and the vocal chords i always think are much deeper than they actually are start vibrating. but, i know my chest is under that too-tight ace bandage. i know that my breasts are still in tact and begging me to unwrap them. i know there is nothing between my legs that i wasn't born with. i know that the shape of my body is anything but manly. i know all of this.

i don't want to be a boy.
but, sometimes, i just want to grow a full beard. and i thought you should know.

same change.

you smell different
than you used to
but you still hold
your pencils the same.
we both have changed
and stayed the same.
by change i mean
i have grown into myself
by same i mean
you have grown
into the mold your mother
cast for you.

instead of gathering.

it's sunday and
your feet are cold
wedged under my thigh.

it tingles
and you laugh.

your eyes are blue
so i forget
what i was saying.

i shiver
from the draft
and you leave.

excerpt from the real thing.

i was so there with you,
the pen in your mouth
might as well have been my finger.

i think i'll cut it off
and ship it express mail.
send you little pieces of myself
that you can glue back on me
with your hands
the next time you see the west coast.

mother's day.

on mother's day
i wanted to send you a card
that said
hey,
thanks for always being there
thanks for always supporting me
thanks for always making me feel loved
but i didn't want to lie.
so i got you a blank card
with a girl scout monster selling cookies
and wrote
i'll see you in september
i love you.

explode me.

i am a nebula.
the remnants of a star
that didn't quite make it to the finish line.
you
exploded me
a perfectly healthy, glowing star.
i didn't just burn out.
i didn't just collapse in on myself
and become a black hole.

i know it was you.

one day
i just looked around
and the gravitational pull
that kept everything in order
vanished
and my guts
were all floating out of me
into the great
scary
unknown.

don't get me wrong-
blowing up hurts.
but there's nothing more freeing
than breaking the laws of physics
and letting the particles
of myself
float as they may.

water.

my love is like rain
falling gently, warm
on your shoulders.
my love
is the water against your window
playing the glass like a bongo
at two am
to sing you back to sleep
after a horrible dream.

but sometimes
my love is like the ocean behind the levies.
most of the time
it takes a hurricane to break them.
but when it finally flows
my love floods the whole city
of your thumping heart
and fills all the hidden spaces
that not even you
knew were there.
the spaces between your walls
where your conscience hid your darkest moments
in bundles of clothes from your old life.
and in the spaces behind your eyelids
where water has only ever left,
my love will rush in and put it all back.

columbine memorial.

it makes me sick, i say.

what? asks my friend.

i say, that plaque. it's supposed to be a memorial and his father made it into some self-righteous statement about how a godless, pro-choice public school killed his son. why would he use this platform to talk about abortion? it just makes me sick.

and there's nothing here for the two boys, my friend says.

which two boys? i ask.

the two boys who shot everyone. there's no memorial here for them.

hmm, i hum.

my friend says, i'm just thinking about how their parents must feel. they lose their child and gain the hatred of the entire nation. and then they don't even get a mention for their loss in this memorial.

yeah, i say.

they were victims too, you know? says my friend.

i ask, so that's where it happened, huh?

that's the school, says my friend.

i say, it looks so normal.

my high school teacher knew someone who went to school with one of the kids. that morning when they were walking to the bus he said, i like you. don't come to school today. at lunch he had to run home to get something and that's when the shooting started.

i like you. don't come to school today, i repeat. wow.

yeah. i know. they were victims, too.

queer or denver?

gay, i say. definitely gay. we look at the woman on the cross walk. our traffic light is red.

nope. denver, says my friend.

how do you know? i ask.

i just do.

gumby.

that night
you saw gumby in the clouds
and i saw
lots of fish and
a few dinosaurs.

you said
the black spaces between
all of the hazy white puffs
could be pictures, too.

so we found a horsehead
and a flower.

and i wanted to kiss you
but i didn't.

nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

don't let the bastards grind you down.

the ink under my skin will always be here
resting
waiting
silently reminding me that i can never never give up.

the needle went in
past my epidermis
straight to my dermis
and to a part of my body
that will never rub off.

defeat is only ever in my head.
so i will not claim it.

when i think of that day
yesterday
i will not think of how they slapped us down
and took their chisels to our hearts
and tried to separate our
bodies from our souls.

i will think of holding one another.
and dancing when they watched us
with their hawk eyes
and their walk-by shooting glances.
and standing outside the steeple doors
with candles glowing in plastic cups
singing hymn choruses we knew by heart.
and snuggling close to keep warm
when the night air was crisp.

we don't need their permission to love.
and they don't know
that my skin is the hardest stone in this city.

their backs will break
from grinding away at me
before i ever
ever
change my shape.

cultural heritage two.

the first day
shoes soaked with snow
i imagined we would read stories
of another people
at another time.
nothing of myself would show.

but humanity is
always
relevant.

in the mirror of the text
i saw my figure
from different angles
and in different lights,
less distorted than before
or more
depending on your ideas of distortion.

Icarus showed me the wings
i've been given,
how fragile they are.
i fly too close.
my wax melts
and i wonder why i drown.

right and wrong do not exist.
subjectivity is to blame
for my lack of consideration
and empathy for others.

i will not let Truth kill me.
Jocasta is a lie.
and the only thing i will carve
from my body
when fate is against me
are the demons that yell
"there is no hope."

pig-headed moments
are human moments
as are the times when it seems that
the world is against me.
i am not alone in suffering.
and sometimes the world
is full of doom
so that the sun seems brighter
than ever
when it shines.

i want to be Socrates
incarnate.
i will stop my feet from moving
an inch
until my thoughts align.
i will admit
what i do not understand.

and all i need to start a movement
is move
and stand my ground.
because the powers that be are always men
and powerful women
will always be seen as agitators
and never heroes.
Lysistrata's idea ended the war,
not her husband's.

death is simply
a blip
on my radar,
and the consequences of sounding
my voice
be damned.

there is no life in fear
and i want to live.

humility as buoyancy
so the mirror cannot be for vanity.
it must be to examine every pore
of my skin
for the truth in myself.

but
i know now
that i know nothing.
and uncertainty is a fickle mistress.
she comforts you while
she twists your arm.
my arms are jumbled but
my muscles are relaxed
and it's sort of like a stretch.

the blemishes on
my skin in the mirror
are fading.
my face is coming in to focus.
i think i am starting to see myself
for the first time.

shapeshifter.

sometimes i see myself and think, wow that looks nothing like me.

potluck.

last night, i caught a glimpse of family.

our words were gusts of wind, pushing each other back up and blasting away the grime of worry we had all collected.

we danced in the living room. our limbs moved like the spirit within them.

there was no space left in my chest for love, so it exploded. they picked up every piece and placed it back in me.

i love them. i love them all.

snow trails.

when i was little you used to put me on the back of your snowmobile and ryan on the back of mom's and we would ride the trails around mattawan. we rode mostly under the power lines behind our neighborhood because it's a straight-away laced with small hills. we felt as though we were flying every few seconds. i used to sing school songs to myself while we were flying. i didn't think you could hear me at the time. but i could make out your mumbling over the zinging motor, so maybe you were listening to my songs. maybe you heard me as i recycled the phrase: i love my dad, i love my dad, i love my dad.

motor home.

it's my dream, i say.

my friend says, all we need is a nice camera and about twenty-eight thousand dollars.

but how will we get the money? i ask. we'll both be in debt up to our ears.

they won't be able to find us if we're one the road all the time, she says.

i say, they definitely won't be able to find us if we're dead. let's get some death certificates and release our student loans, hang low for ten years then smack, break out our footage of traveling all over north america. and to make money we'll take odd jobs like drifters do. you know, washing dishes for a meal or helping an elderly coupld move firewood for a hot shower.

who does that? asks my friend.

american nomads, i say. i think they exist. or maybe they're just called homeless people. i saw it on mtv once. but, when will we be able to visit our families?

whenever we want, she says. we will be lawless.

i don't think i could ever be that free, i say. lawlessness scares me.

me too. i want kids and a house and a dog, she says.

i know, me too, i say. but i would do it, though.

i know, she says.

that would be amazing, though.

i know.

click click.

i imagined today that people are like gears.

aristophanes tells a story of the original three sexes: male, female, and androgynous-each with four arms, four legs, and spherical. every person was cut in half to restrain us. so, he suggests that this is the reason we spend our entire lives looking for our soul mates, looking for another person to complete us and make us whole again.

all of that jerry macguire shit about one person completing another is bull. i am a whole person on my own.

maybe it's not about finding a person who "completes" me. maybe it's just about finding another gear, slightly rusted and imperfect in places that mirror my own broken pieces. and together we will fit in our brokenness.

and we will click click click.

the be in.

i don't know how to write about losing.

i can write all of the letters i want.
sing all of the hymns and folk songs i know.
i could build an army of pissed off people.
teach them to fight, hit a target three countries away.
i could starve myself, kill myself.
i could be ghandi.
i could use faith books as weapons.
and cut off their heads with my tongue.

or, i could love them.

gaga.

one day lady gaga will rule the world.

i will have to learn to walk in stilettos. and the propaganda of the media will surround the latest brand of bubble wrap.

i'm not coordinated enough to be a background dancer.

oh, shit.

blarg.

endings suck.

few loose ends are ever tied.

they blow in the wind and
smack
my face.

and endings travel in packs.

like a group of girls
who can't handle the mystery
of the bathroom
alone.

she called me today and told me she did it, too.

but the truth of mass is constant.
when i am squeezed from one place,
i must go somewhere else.

seattle.
holland's ends are slappin'
and i am out of here.

rosette nebula.

he says, we need to find the distance between our eyes and the angle to this object to find out how far away it is.

i nod.

he says, otherwise we're just looking at pretty pictures.

what's wrong with that? i say.

he says, we're scientists.

why can't i be the kind of scientist who just appreciates the beauty for what it is? i say.

i think you're in the wrong place, he says.

why no I.

i don't use capital i's.

english is one of the few languages that teaches the capitalization of i.

german ich
spanish yo
dutch ik
polish ja
and it's no secret we're one of the most self-serving, materialistic cultures in the world. these two things must be abstractly correlated.

how can i serve others when my i capitalize "i" and not "you" or "us?"

one thing is certain.
i will spend the rest of my life fighting the urge to press the shift key.

tree people.

dear everyone reading,
(which is probably no one.)

i have just decided i am moving into the woods and never coming back.

i will meet some nice tree people. learn their ways.
we will solve all of the problems in the world.
we will cure cancer with our hands.
we will learn solutions to world peace that satisfy every person.
we will know the truth from the stories.
we will understand the presence of all things.

now, you might think i would come back eventually. share the cures and truth and peace with the world i knew before.
but by this time, i've forgotten about that world.
or i am too scared to return,
knowing full well they would hang me.

it's not that the tree people don't care about you.

we just know you will never understand
until you go into the woods and never come back.

old old song.

i cannot sit down.
i cannot breathe. they won't let me live
in my own body.
sit down, they say.
sit down and listen to what we know.
breathe deep our words,
our hate.
i cannot sit down.
my legs will not fold that way.

mental block.

what is it about her? this mental block that she has no fucking clue how wrong she is? i don't know.

my mother.
oh, my mother.

she's been brainwashed.

i have no idea how it happened either because i've known her since she birthed me. does she just want to feel as though she always has the answer? every answer in one book? imagine that. every question you have ever had is clear cut and dry and in a portable book. i imagine that would feel nice. comforting. i can see why she holds onto it so tightly.

but to her, people fighting for their rights is the same thing as infringing upon hers.

seems to be there is a whole lot of "othering" going on here. the majority pushing a minority group away, saying “those people over there who do these things that I would never do,” instead of embracing the differences and focusing on the things that connect us each as humans.

i don't know much of anything, but i do know this: physical, verbal, emotional, and spiritual violence against another person silences them. i also know that sometimes people are silenced just because the person in charge of the microphone never hands it over. they filibuster the shit out of their privilege.

what causes one person to silence another? the privileged person in me says the fear of losing something, the fear of my privileges leaving because the status of owning the upper hand disappears if everyone has it. the minority in me says the same thing in a defeatist voice.

i guess it must be true if my white/middle class and queer/woman insides are in agreement.

theme: silencing comes from the majority's fear of losing control or bringing themselves “down” a level if they choose to treat others as they would like to be treated.

wait.
that last part sounds familiar.

ten commandments, anyone?
bueller?
bueller?

i wonder if she knows that moving past ignorance and towards tolerance is a christian mandate. i also wonder if it would make any bit of difference to her.

it's scary when people can't see outside of themselves. it's some scary shit, man.

restless.

my stomach has been hurting for two days. that sort of dull ache that feels like i either need to eat or yak, but i'm never sure which. ew. gross.

i just feel so damn restless.

i don't know how everything is going to turn out this semester. the concert. the be in. the board meeting.

it's 4:50 am and i still haven't gone to bed. my mind won't stop about all of this. what if this happens? what if this really happens? what if the policy is lifted? i wouldn't know what to do with myself.

god.

i need to meditate for an hour each morning. i need to fast. i need to be in the moment.

but my head is already in seattle. the semester is over for me and we have three weeks to go. but i want to be here. my mind already got on that plane, though. it's probably sitting with Bo in the backyard, barking at all of the fuckers walking by.

my heart isn't here. it hasn't been for a long time. i'm not sure where it went. maybe i left it in philadelphia. maybe it, too, is waiting for me in seattle. god only knows where it is now.

i want to be in a place with its arms out, ready to embrace. or even with hands on hips. heck, i'd take dangling arms at this point. just anything but crossed arms or limbs shoving away. that's all we get here. that's all we get.

basically, i need to dance.

grab the portable pole. i'm gone.

child.

it's 1:06 am and i am sitting in a large circular room by myself. a rotunda. oh, so rotund.

i am going through my facebook notes.
and i wish right now more than ever that i could go back and meet my former self, little freshman lindsay, and just hug her. i would hug her and hold her and tell her that pain is on the way. but so is unbelievable joy. and accomplishment. i would tell her that she is capable of anything. she is capable of pushing away the ones she loves the most. she is capable of healing. she is capable of things people will tell her over and over she cannot do.

more than all of that, i would tell her that she's beautiful and loved. i would tell her that it's not her, it's the world. the culture is to blame. it's nothing you did wrong, child. none of this is your fault. smile. please, smile. it will all get better soon.

it comes off in patches. (2.15.09)

it's the worst pain i've known
growing into myself.
so many bones broken
from word boulders
shot with hate catapults.
arms tired, muscles aching
trembling from peeling away
layers of expectation
and normal.
it comes off in patches
closer than my skin.
it rips, i bleed
and know that i will heal
in rough patches of scars.
the tissue will trail out
and remind me of the way stars
glittered the night
i asked God to break me--
the darkness where i said:
i don't need you to build me a path,
only let your light guide me
through dense fields of
honesty and invention,
veracity and falsehood
to touch the core of you.
to see the face of God.

those people.

i don't have a problem with those people as long as they aren't kissing and groping each other in public, my mother says.

i say, do you feel that way about everyone?

yes, says my mother.

why don't you say that about straight couples?

my mother says, we're not talking about them.

we're talking about people, i say.