Poetry

A vehicle of travel that’s exhaust

Is exhausting to clean up.

To scrub from my floors,

My hills,

My caves.

It is a challenge no one has attempted

I listen to each word of my country,

Each act that fights to get rid of everyone I care for.

Each word that our government cleverly boasts

About how they belong to us.

How can I love

Those who creep through the dark

With their cloak of painful truths?

Their intentions were not love,

And only skitter away

So we can shoot

But we can’t harm

While all they do is shoot us down?

With their shackles,

Their laws,

Their money

For the first twelve years of my life,
There was no direct purpose in existing.
But then—
on the night of my thirteenth,
butterfly wings sprouted
from my back.

I got my own garden to tend.

We tried and though we could have done more,

We did enough to be us and create the good--and the flaws-- in those who still walk forward.

Why does your torch burn? 

The young girl asks, 

Pouting her lower lip in confusion. 

It is fire, 

The lady gently responds, 

I want to cross the street and have cars catapult around me

Mass destruction like wouldn't you know it

I want my steps to echo the pavement

And for the world to swerve around me

But I walk and nothing happens

(ywp is like the sunrise)

washed in watercolor above the sleeping world

enchantingly illuminatory

& strawberry melting into orange creamsicle. if you pay

close attention, it never really ends

I hold onto anything that leaves a mark.

rings that coat my fingers in green

doodles in blue ink on my arm

I hope for my injuries to form scars

just to prove their existence.

scratching bug bites until they scab

I am such a horrible awful jerk

I refuse pets

I refuse animals

Because I refuse to get another

Because that feels like replacing her

And so I won't do it

But there are all these animals out there

Have a great Labor Day weekend, everybody!

What if it's not labor

What if I want to anyway

What if that was why I got out of bed every painful stupid day after the other