Picking Up The Pieces
Afterparty
The floors are lathered in
a coat of unidentified goo.
Is it morning yet? Or is it
the middle of the night?
I see my body from above me,
a sad excuse of a person.
I return to myself as the music dims down,
only to realize I have nothing to return to.
I press my feet hard against the gooed-up
wooden flooring, trying to make the moment last.
I want to make a dent the size of a crater,
I want to let people know that–
despite my absence–I lived.
My pain becomes never more apparent
than when my so-called friends fill my home,
or my hollow body fills someone else’s.
A Person That Is No Longer
you didn’t die, you live,
i wish you away.
what is remembering,
if not fiction?
you offered
peace and i called you God.
“i have always been a martyr.”
you are my faith; i cannot
renounce You, but I wish you away
like a child does their parent.
“i repent.”
Storms
The breeze of a deity, the air
Of a witch, caresses my longing:
Breath for my compromised lungs.
Filling them, not with oxygen
But spiritual kinship.
Vibrations of melancholy
Penetrate skin, reach beyond—
Like my reflection reaching
Out the river—
finally a familiar embrace.
A wave of sorrow transcends, quickly becoming
your cries and mine and everything that has ever felt or been.
The lines were never blurry,
Sound is a god, and in sound, we live.
Pandora’s Box
I knew it back then,
some of us are just born
Bruised,
yet to become rotten.
I tried so hard to think otherwise
when you looked at me.
I’ve been no saint, never deserving
of that mythical force, but
It was nice to believe in you,
in your magic.
Your goodness is what God made
this universe thinking of
and I am a purgatory for
my self-induced sins.
What a gift it was to have been grazed by you.
How lucky, how damned, can one be?
I was only graceful,
for you
I would’ve been anything.
I was safe until
you tore me open.
Then came rushing the truth,
Like water out of a broken pipe
in a storm, flooded,
Blood gushing from within
a hidden wound, I died,
I drowned. I wished
for my angel
to never awaken me
again that was not my fate.
You stayed,
evergreen, ever peaceful, and:
“The troubles of the world
all belong to me.”
Me Comio La Lengua El Ratón
Mi abuela me lo dijo
tantas veces, que me ha pasado.
Cuando era niña, era fácil
decir lo que quisiera.
Enrollaba la lengua para articular
mis deseos, los canté.
Quien me iba a decir que solo se cumple
lo cumplido, y lo deseado te busca
cuando no lo queres encontrar.
Años anhelando esta vida y me ha atrapado.
Soñé tantas veces, dormí muy poco.
Nunca me dejé llevar por el destino, lo no creado.
Mi abuela ya no está, y con ella
se fue mi inocencia.
"Me comió la lengua el ratón,"
y la imaginación me la quitó la vida.
Dissection
I can’t kill a fly without seeing
a future in flames, but I can wish
death upon my brothers and smile
at my reflection.
You can search
for everything it is you long for in this life,
I’m afraid it’s gone.
Waste your time; I'll buy you some.
What currency
do they take anyway?
I’ll bargain with my newborn laughter and
bottled oxygen. I’ll label it one of a kind.
Breathless, I still fear
that despite our efforts to separate,
despite the truth of our composition. God or
this computer made us the same.
But please do look at me
with those eyes,
tell me I am something.