April Madness 2024

sometimes, i’d like to tear myself apart;
rip my skin away until there is nothing
left but marrow and shattered bones.
i’ll pick at my brain piece by piece
and slowly, slowly, slowly, my entire being
will disintegrate into nothing more than a memory.

and when i finally die and mother nature
holds me in her arms, i hope you’ll find
a bouquet growing from my lungs.
i hope you’ll see that i tried and tried again
to create a life inside my dead body.
i hope you’ll see that i was more than flesh.

because although my casket was filled with a shell
of a girl, i still shared all that i was with the world.
you’ll see it on everything i touched—
i gifted my fingerprints to everything beautiful; left my hands
broken and brittle, not because i always peeled away my skin,
but because i gave away every line of my palm.

and if you ask my loved ones who i was,
they’ll give you an orchid and three marigolds
from when i opened myself in front of them.
they’ll tell you that i gave more than i had,
that i left my footprint in every dirt road,
and that my body was filled with flowers and ash.

thingsleftinlastyear

sixteen / my childhood home / some lover carved into a dogwood tree stump / limbs tangled together on the couch / limbs tangled together on my bed / cracks in the wall & the other spaces i dont fit anymore / the scale in the bathroom / anywhere i have had a body, even once / all of the closure i have never gotten / my grandmothers urn / womanhood bastardized / every symbol of what is to come

A year of dust and this grassy haven still feels like home
though I’m unrecognizable, a stranger at night who steals home

My feet know the roads, my face knows the rain, my eyes know the sky;
my heart remembers the pain of this grey and teal home

There is no “return” to the house; my soul lives there still,
lingering by your old door, recalling the kiss that once sealed this home

But now others walk these crooked stairs, sleep in these rooms
and God keeps telling me that anywhere I kneel is home

So let me kneel here, at the foot of my mountain, and pray,
that one day I can come back to live in my real home.

we've been here before; and we'll be here again

this is only the uncomfortable exhale
before the rain comes, and
the creek overflows-too-quick, and
the centuries-worn tree turns
unnaturally against the shore,
leaning into flood-plains,
broken, seemingly-unsteady, and yet
impossibly-strong in the way only
sea glass and river trees know
how to hold the strength of eternity
in their smoothed edges.
i've been here before, she says.
and we nod together, steadying ourselves
in the familiar way we must live-on
as the thunder rattles the sky,
and the rain begins to fall.