Poetry

"Fun is overrated. 

You just always want to make sure

Everyone's happy.

In fact, 

If anything,

You should be prettier. 

Like in life."

I didn't want to be prettier. 

before he'd left

i could find things

because i knew 

i wanted it to be different for me

you talked too much

or not enough

you let yourself go

or your makeup looked too harsh 

I wished I knew all the right things to say. 

Or maybe my wish was bigger than that.

I wanted to always be enough.

***

"I'm fine. I don't know what's wrong with me."

I stayed up until midnight with my brother

in that horrible hotel room in North Carolina.

(I say horrible because I hate going down south

hate the Trump bobblehead in my nonny and poppy's house

You compared me to a"beautiful flower."

I don't think I'm beautiful.

Especially not like the pink flower you said I was.

I'd say I'm more like a notebook, 

there, but not noticed.

Wow - 2026? 2025 passed so fast!

Today I looked back on the past.

It was hard last year, maybe the last couple of years, actually.

Why do people say that?

How do people say that?

They say it as if it's all a joke,

and maybe to them it is,

but to the people being bullied it's not, 

 it never was,

and it never will be.

The moon whispers

Oh so quietly, yet

It is louder than all else

Its words wind through the frozen trees and dance across the sparkling snow, the forest still but for its wavering reminder that

The house was on fire, 

And the ceiling fell.

But when it did, 

It didn't land well.
 

It was your cause of death,

At just fourteen. 

You had to leave, 

Chamomile tea on a winter's day is

Comforting as a warm hug

Soothing as ointment on chapped skin 

Steaming like the lazy trail of smoke from a chimney

Wonderful like a homemade thank you card 

First transgender representative 

First protester

First lesbian senior 

First Muslim mayor 

First to take a stand

First in history

But that's not the point is it?

Not at all

I,
the me,
the oxymoron.