Poetry

Oh, no, I’m not here

For a reason.

It’s an almost comforting thing

The fleck of light of a chance

The infinite things

That had to go right.

If I were a different person

You see a mother and her daughter —

Both smiling, both beautiful, both whole.

What you don’t see is the message sitting in her pocket,

Telling her that her husband isn’t coming home from war.

I struggle to write because I don't want to say the truth. 

That I fucked up and said yes,

I want this.

I am scared because it won't work.

That I fell for his eyes, 

his heart and his voice.

We live in this world together.

and if we could all walk with our feet

firm on the ground, feeling the universe, feeling the world

so distant become what nurtures us,

if we could all walk only for a moment

without our hatred, without our grudges,

We met like passengers
assigned to the same row
close enough to share armrests,
not a destination.

I am but 

One speck in the Universe, 

One piece of the world, 

One person amidst a billion. 

I am just 

We lie inches apart, 
faces turned from one another, 
like two commas in the same sentence 
that never connect. 

And I looked, and there was this ugly brown girl asking for some less brownness, perhaps.

We were birdsong
We were giant redwood trees
We were bones bleached by desert sun
We were metaphors and similes
We were poems and poets
We were wildfire
We were ebbing in and out
We were waves in the blue atlantic

The walls utter gossip at night.
They watch new women pass,
different steps, new perfumes,
claiming corners they'll never own.

I've seen a penguin in a trench coat 

Questioning the tide.

I've seen a pigeon on the couch 

Licking chip salt from its wings.