Note: This poem is half in Spanish and half in English, because I'm taking Spanish in school and wanted to see if I could write a poem in Spanish! I ended up writing some of it in English, and had to use Google Translate a tiny bit. I apologize in advance if there's any Spanish grammatical errors!

Yo tengo un cuento para tu, 
ella dice,
and I imagine butterflies flying
in cream-colored skies. 

Tu corres como si el viento 
is chasing you, 
y me pregunto por qué,
because you say you love the
air that gives you life. 

Ella nada en mares de lavanda,
bebiendo aire azucarado 
y baile en las estrellas de la noche. 

Scraps of paper flood his room,
crumpled with scribbles
and spit.
It's the world of a storyteller,
he tells me. 

Pero yo no quiero esa vida,
so I line my paper with black dots instead
y espero que él esta viviendo en un mundo

I swim in the midst of strawberry seas,
bubble waves washing over my 
golden head,
my broken mind. 

I sing in streets of lilies,
begging you to come outside
of your glass palace that you sit in all day—
a palace I have never seen,
but one I wish I could explore. 

I dance in the mossy, plentiful ruins 
you’ve left behind,
and I wonder if my heart is as raspberry-colored
as yours was. 

You ask for colors and paintings,
so I’ll give you my bursting thoughts. 

Do you not see the ice cream deserts
and cherry blossom meadows
that lie in front of you? 
You have the world,
so why would you leave it
for another? 

Do you not remember those star-speckled nights,
when the world seemed to still
and we were all that was left?

Do you not remember
how you made me laugh 
like no one else ever has?

Clocks tick and there is a constant 
beating 
in my head.
I run away to forget. 
I look at the vultures and chemtrails 
up above,
and imagine they go on forever. 
I imagine we go on forever. 

You dance lightly, 
your toes barely touching the ground. 
Your fingers are long and graceful,
reaching out to an invisible world I long to visit. 

I see almond eyes everywhere I go,
I see expensive bags encased in cotton covers. 
Somewhere in lines of scrambled code,
I write of you as a child. 
I write of your brothers and sisters, 
of your mother, father, uncle. 
I try to believe I can keep you alive in my words. 

Can humans be reborn through stories?
Can humans live inside of stories? 

I fear the answers to these questions,
so instead
I look at the vultures and chemtrails
up above, 
at their spread wings

When the flowers fall with every burst of wind,
I imagine they swim their way back up
to their position among
the leaves and oranges. 
Shadows of broken clouds 
pass overhead,
the petals of orange blossoms
turning from grey and then
back to white. 
They litter the ground,
drowning grass
and making the floor
look like a white-capped sea.
With spring comes flowers,
don't you see?
 

The sky is flecked with
golden stars.
Cream-colored stones splatter
the bark ground,
and I balance on my padded feet
as I walk across the bridge
made of a single tree trunk. 
My toes grip around strips of leathery
branches,
leaves crinkling underneath
my light footfalls. 
Glowing mushrooms
dot the ground,
lighting my path
and making the forest floor
look like the star-speckled sky. 

The clearing is filled with snow. 
Cherry trees line it,
orange trees scattered throughout. 
Bushes with strange red berries
encase it.  

I sit down in the middle of the clearing
and plunge my arms into the ice cold
stream
that gurgles in front of me. 
I lift my arms, reaching to the sky. 

And I feel alive. 
My arms scream,
I see my crystalized breath,
but I feel
alive. 

Water streams down my arms in the moonlight.

I swim in pitch black seas,
flaming stars dotting the depths. 
The seeds of figs slowly creep
into trees of metal
and stone leaves. 

Eyes became dim,
recognition hazy, 
minds foggy
and bones brittle. 

I live in memories,
of the taste of the layer of sweetness
that envelopes the pits of cherries. 
I sweat under imaginary German suns,
watching as someone else
is writing with chalk on gravel
and leaving spaces in the middle of letters. 
I pretend to walk under clear skies,
complaining and begging for ice cream.

My origami heart is folded
and creased. 
All our origami hearts have 
tears 
and tears
and tape
and little strings with buttons attatched
that hang off at the ends. 
An ocean of golden liquid
pools at the bottom of
our papery organs, 
but the paper doesn’t become 
limp
and weak. 

She hoards little bottles of 
perfumes
on the shelves of her kitchen,
each drowning in its own scent—
cinnamon, mint, tulip, basil, berry. 
Her sets of blue and white china
are stored in dusty 
brown cabinets with windows
you can barely see through. 
All the mirrors in her house
are cracked,
only held together
by tape. 
She keeps rows and rows of
Mason jars
in crates in her basement,
each containing a song
no one can hear. 
She only has photos of maps in her house—
places she wants to go,
not places she’s been,
not people she’s seen. 
She’s a dreamer
in that sense. 
Her keys to the house are held together
by a navy blue ribbon,
frayed and tattered. 
She wakes up every night
at 12 o’clock
to make herself a warm cup of
herbal tea. 
I know this because she
calls me
every night
at 12 o’clock

I want to reach for Jupiter's moons,
and I'll pour honey into the empty
shells
of coconuts. 
It doesn't seem impossible 
to grab a fistful of black sand
from the bottom of the ocean. 
I can hide invisible thoughts
behind rows and rows of words. 
I picture a little girl
picking ripe berries in
a green field,
a young boy studying 
a language his father
couldn't read. 
The pits of cherries
have a coat of sweetness,
and using chalk to
write
on gravel leaves
uneven spots 
in the middle of letters. 
Cold milk goes perfectly
with cheese and macaroni,
but no one else will know that,
as the glass of milk
has already spilled. 
Stars speckle the sky 
like holes in a cardboard box.
My handwriting is not messy—
my ideas are created
too fast to write 
neatly. 
Give me colors,
give me light.

If I were to create a list of things that remind me of laughter and childhood,
the list would be too long,
but I wish it would never stop. 

I miss visiting New York in autumn, 
raking up the red and orange leaves into a large pile
and watching my sisters jump inside of it—
laughing and smiling all the while. 

I miss Halloween,
dressing up as someone you’re not,
pretending to be them
for at least one night;
a soccer player,
a nerdy genius, 
an archer. 

I miss trips all over the world,
going to France and visiting ice caves
and a melting glacier,
seeing the burnt carcass of a stunning church,
eating flower ice cream,
hiking to Switzerland on a sunny day 
(although, for me, the day felt cold and rainy). 

I miss skiing, 
how I hated the numb feeling of tired feet,
the thrill of ice flying into your face as you ride down a slope, 

  The first thing I notice is the smell of lemon poppyseed bread. Well, that and the thought that sweat is rolling down my fur. I'll smell in a few minutes, I know, if I don't get out from under this abandoned paper bag and move around. But don't all city mice smell like sewage and rotten banana peels? Don't all city mice have matted fur and lice? 
   But the lights—so many of them. They fly upwards, downwards, and across, and speckle the night sky on top of cement pillars. The sky is painted black; something I'm not used to. Normally, smaller, dimmer lights twinkle in the sky, but tonight the stars seem to be all around me.