Fathers and Daughters

Pink sweater,

dirty blonde hair

falling out of a headband

she probably put on herself.

Around six or seven years old,
holding her father's hand

with the kind of smile that will

break someone's heart someday.

I wonder what will happen

before someday.

As she bounces away, 

I imagine a girl

fifteen years older.

The same dirty blonde hair,

longer now,

pulled back. 

A girl who can't sleep in the same room

as another person. 

I wonder what will make her this way.

No Angels In London

They called her fallen,
and she can't fight what they say;
she will never get back up.

Children cry in the streets, not knowing exactly why,
not knowing that it could be so much better
than they've ever known.
The angels can't do anything to help.
Their wings are torn, their hands scarred
from dealing with the pain so no one else has to.
They hide their bruised arms and red eyes
with long sleeves and makeup.
They keep it together so no one else has to.
Because anything short of perfection is the same as damnation,
and anything less than what's expected isn't tolerated.
And so they struggle to maintain the imperfect, impossible ideal.

Identity is lost in a uniform congregation,
and it's difficult to separate the corruption from the institution.
The hollow reflection in the mirror becomes a shadow
as personal histories become suicide notes.
No one escapes unscathed.

While desire is a sin for women,
it's expected of men.

Our purpose is to purify those men
who can't control their own thoughts.
Their privilege is to tell us how to live,
but they can only do so because we let them.

Forgotten suit jackets hang over chairs
and the men turn the heat down
although the women are still cold in the skirts
they've been told to wear as a sign of devotion.

Wealthy old men grow richer on the pockets
of devotees who can't escape their circumstances. 
Senile old women babble on about a time no one remembers,
not even those who lived it alongside her.
Proud young men lose their self-control to obsession,
believing that everything will be just fine.
Battered young women never learn to expect
anything better from themselves or their lives.

Caged birds may sing of freedom,
but women sing because they are told to.
If they stop they lose the only acceptance they have ever known.
To be free is to be irredeemable.

God forbid a woman think for herself.

All they had to do was leave London,
but they can't.
London is everywhere, and
there are no angels to be found.

Untitled

It's almost funny,

how you think it will never end,

and suddenly it's four years later. 

It's almost funny,

how much it still hurts,

even after all this time. 

Entitled

He fears the changes he's seen in me,
and maybe the ones he hasn't yet.
I fear his anger over my decisions,
the ones he doesn't agree with.

People fear what they don't understand,
and we both fear what the other could do to us.

I finally understand what he meant
all those years ago,

and I'm afraid it might cost

more than I'm willing to pay. 

Satin

It was a week before the holiday.
When I left, I lit a candle.

We drank wine and whiskey.
I could see his heartbeat,
feel her voice,
taste our liquor.
We said that we are
a beautiful existence.

A woman waits on the wall
reaching out for something,
the lines of her fingers stark
against the black fog that surrounds her.

We tasted like wine and whiskey.
Beneath soft blankets
we shared a pillow,
pressed close enough that
three days later his cologne
still lingered on my shirt.

I held my heart in my collarbone,
my body thudding with every beat.
All I heard was silence,
the fire gone out of my fingers
although his still burned.

We put a lot of power in firsts.
This one didn’t have to mean anything,
but that doesn’t mean it meant nothing.
The way his shirt stretched
across his shoulders,
over my skin,
his hands in my hair.

When I leave, the woman on the wall
beckons me to stay.
I go.
Maybe I’ll find what she’s looking for.

When I returned home,
the candle still flickered.

I wanted to tell him I'm not sorry,
but those words could ignite.
So I walked out,
listened to him lock the door behind me.

My flame burned out with the candle—
whether or not I did the smothering,
it was always going to suffocate.
I should have known better
than to let it burn so long.

Maybe the woman on the wall
was never looking for anything.
Maybe she isn’t reaching,
but letting go.

The Scent Of Fallen Leaves

A fractured piece of light
I still see the way the leaves ripple in the slight breeze
In the patterns of light behind my eyelids

I reveled in that weather
The potent wind blowing leaves across pavement
Rain that scuttles instead of falling

Hugs in bathroom stalls
Every day the same boy gets on the bus
just one stop before I get off

November came and went
But I don't see him on the bus anymore
And the leaves are gone now

Just For You

I wanted to write about sexual masochism, but I can't write what I don't know.

What I do know is how it feels when every day is the same.

When you make it to campus and the one person you want to avoid

is the one who won't let you leave him alone. You should respond when spoken to,

but you really don't want to.

When you just remembered that on top of the homework you've written down,

you have groceries to buy, money to make, emails to respond to, the list goes on—

a hydra of tasks that multiply endlessly when you cross one off

but you can't leave your list untouched; sanity is already on the line

and you can only try to salvage it by acting like you're doing something.

It doesn't matter how much you have to do as long as you have to do something.

When you want to skip class but that would require admitting the unspeakable.

The routine goes on and takes you with it and you pretend it's okay

but it's not, damn it, it's not.

When your scrawled future plans choke you and you feel the weight of

decisions you haven't made and this is the hell of a reality you don't want.

You don't want to add to his worries but you tell him anyway,

and when you leave you feel sorry for doing it and you worry.

You don't know if he knows that you love him not in spite of his past

but because of who he is and you want to help but you don't know how.

When you drag yourself to class anyway because if you don't go

you'll worry you missed something important. Your insecurities hit you

right when everything else crumbles and you've got to hold it together, damn it.

There is no other choice.

When you have more to write but this math will never make sense

unless you pay attention, because the last math class you took was in high school

and that was a long time ago and you need a break.

So you just keep writing because you love your life but not today

and you are going to lose it. Damn it, you're losing it.

When you've got to keep your shit together because you have to peak publicly

in seventy-six minutes and it will suck but you have to do it.

You wouldn't have missed anything if you hadn't gone to class,

except you missed what was said and you miss the days last week

when you thought you had it together and you've got to keep it together but

today isn't even halfway over—in six more weeks you'll get three off

but that's an eternity away. You hope it's glorious, but who knows.

When you want to take a mental health day but you can't, damn it, you can't.

You can only blame your watery eyes on the change in the weather,

and write what you know.