It’s your birthday today
and I remember how you
ripped my metallic dress that night
you asked me to dance with you
and how it was the closest thing
I had to a shield.

It was the only thing protecting me
from the adrenaline on the dance floor
that you had mistaken for passion
like the way creases make love to bedsheets
when they’re actually just frowns in the fabric.

I remember how your drunken hands
plucked my straps
as if you were a musician
without an instrument
begging for permission instead of money.
I hope you know now that
my body wasn’t the change you needed.

Sometimes
I wish I lived in a coffeehouse
so that I would’ve been raised in the laughter and murmur of strangers
I would be conditioned by silenced thoughts
and the aroma would pollute my coffee-stained skin

Then the backs of paper coffee cups would teach me morals my parents never had
like
how failure is only acceptable when you embrace it
because that’s the only way you’ll ever learn

And one day, summer will drag a dark haired boy in
and he will order the same venti iced caramel macchiato
with extra caramel drizzled on the sides as me
because he’s just as tired of the world as I am

His arms will be long
and the insides of his elbows will be bruised from carrying dead weight
He’ll say that it’s the weight of the world
and when I ask why,
he’ll say that it’s because he’s embraced failure too often
and that he’s learned too much for someone who’s barely eighteen

He will make the caramel taste sweeter and the coffee more bitter each time he visits
He will sit across from me with politeness and charm steaming from his beverage on late December nights
and the only thing I will be dreaming about when the caffeine starts to laugh for him 
is how badly I want the mouth of his lid to be my own whenever he takes a cautionary sip

There was this girl who thought her body was a garden
instead of a temple
since she’d rather plant dreams like seeds into her skin.
She drew dandelions on her ankles
and roses on her wrists
because she believed that every step
was a wish waiting to be granted
but the thorns of those roses looked more like scars.

Some days, they looked like tallies
for each footstep that was washed away
by the waves of her self esteem.
Some of the older girls would step on her favorite golden tulips
and would kick her albino daisies.
If anyone was going to have a garden,
it was going to be them;
Not some girl with vines tattooed on the insides of her ashy elbows.

Then one day, she had a tsunami of confidence
that consumed her dry patches of dirt and shoe marks
that looked more like battle scars
than pubescent insecurities pressed into soil.
She rained with strength and hailed with resistance.
Gardens need love and care and starting over.
Gardens need work.

Her mother always said that she was in season;
that instead of wished away dandelions and dying roses,
she was sunflowers in summer
and cherry blossoms in spring.
Her mother always said that was in full bloom
no matter the weather.
She just had to pull out the weeds.

She learned about death at an early age
and held her funeral
in her bathroom
with her obituary scribbled in self hatred above the sink

She committed suicide
to her reflection when she was barely
thirteen
and punctured her insecurities
with the mirror’s fingernails
as if this glass
chasm of lies
embodied society’s
definition of beauty
that magnified her flaws with
brutal
honesty.

Her mother showered her with make up that made her look 5 years older than she really was
and jeans three sizes smaller
that felt as if she was struggling into an indirect comparison to her sisters that was made of denim
as if her waistline had to be smaller than her GPA

Magazines bled standards like the truth
and advertisements
were her bible
She practiced the art of artificial allure daily
committing herself to a religion
of recognition
but her prayers
were more like cries for help
that begged
for a physical savior.

When she was thirteen,
she committed suicide
to her skin,
pulling her eyelids out
with eyelash curlers
and stabbing at her flesh
with make up brushes

because acceptance
never loved the constellations on her skin
and acknowledgement
never embraced curves the way her blouses did
as if attention embodied the disaster that she was.

She—
was a walking hurricane. 

When she was thirteen,
she never understood
that confidence
didn’t mean exterior security
and that satisfaction
didn’t mean liquid foundation

When she was thirteen,
she never learned to love herself

He had bright eyes that poured sunlight into his skin
because his flesh 
could never retain the youth his soul encompassed.
Nature wore him down to the bones
and maybe that’s how we are born 
and maybe that’s how we leave…

through the dirt.
Adam was never a clean man to begin with
and somehow he still birthed us with bacteria in our veins.
We were never clean to begin with.

She always felt dirty
as if her hands were ruined with the imprint of his touch
and the lines that kissed her palms sagged,
emulating the way his wrinkles spelled out stories.

Macbeth is her favorite one
because Shakespeare glorified impurity
and all she ever wanted was reassurance stapled to her lungs
so she could exhale confidence
instead of suffocating in anxiety.
She knew this was going to happen.
She just didn’t know when.

Her cosmic gaze would always remind you 
of how close they would be to his sun-ray orbs
since their genetics are a galaxy God carefully strung together Himself.
They were beautiful.
Whenever she blinked, 
her eyelashes always told you to handle with care
because she knew she was fragile
maybe even more than him
and I knew she was a package that was delivered already broken.

I just wanted to put her back together again
because maybe if I reassembled her,
she’d remember that she was always the finest piece of China.

Happiness is when

Your relationship is with

your mattress and sheets

I am an artist of word vomit
who paints definitions with my tongue
My resume is a dictionary
of lyrical qualities 
I am highly skilled in syntax and
an expert in diction
I wear synonyms in my tool belt
and hammer metaphors into the ears of my listeners
as if I’m planting inspiration into their minds
I am a gardener of sentences
I water my thoughts with adjectives
so I can articulate hope to the hopeless
and breed ideas for the next generation
I am the president
an advocate for verbal movement
I preach about equality and peace
and spark epiphanies of change
even when I’m not talking about money
as if this economy is capable of doing so

I am a poet
and you are incapability
I’ve written about you in my dreams
but always woke up to writer’s block
You were the gaps in my paragraphs
and flaws in my poems
I’ve always wanted your last name to rhyme with mine
but I wasn’t sure how the word impossible could sound so sweet
I’ve tried to love you the same way I fell in love with the alphabet
Repetitively
and at a young age too

I once fell in love with an atheist
who insisted that he would one day become a tree

since forests are the graveyards of nonbelievers
Each niche in the wood would tally his sins 
as if he wore his scars as a trenchcoat

His gaze was heavy with lust
and when he spoke,
his words held onto me
like I was a nun being touched for the first time

His was always envious of my pillows
because they listened to my secrets
and held my dreams captive.
He believed that I had affairs when I was asleep
because they flirted with my thoughts at night.

He breathed logic into my lungs
and 
when he put his mouth on mine
it felt as if the devil was performing CPR on my beliefs.

He suffocated me with temptation
and exchanged my faith
for what I thought was freedom.
I always thought religion was a prison
and that I was shackled by the New Testament

God was no longer my anchor
and I was now sailing on the waves of sin.
I became seasick with self-corruption for him
Curse words were tattooed on the corners of my lips
and I was taught a thousand different ways to say ‘disrespect’ to my parents
It was as if all my conversations were written in caps lock
and for some reason,
I thought that the hands that fed me actually tasted divine
I spat lies to them as if I was convincing myself to believe them.

He started coming home Sunday afternoons
and said that he was called in for work
He ate dinner after moments of silence
and kissed me with honesty.
He 
tasted like innocence.

I walked in on him reciting prayers in bed one night
moaning Mary’s name
that was full of grace.
He said Amen instead of goodbye
and drew invisible crosses on his body
as if he was trying to forgive himself.
He never apologized for cheating on me with God.

I wore shame around my neck
in the form of a rosary
but to me,
it was a religious noose.

My gun was loaded with the bibles pages
and defeat was pulling the trigger
I repented with the pistol to my head
because I believed that death would be my salvation
and that living is my sin

I had committed a religious suicide
so I could die for my own sins
and that’s when God resurrected my faith

The life that I live is not one to call my own

I have been trapped by the boundaries of obedience
and cornered by disrespect
because I need to be my own person

But these puppet strings are like a noose of dependence,
slowly suffocating me until the life that I wish to call my own is dead and barren
Like the shadow of you that I have been compelled to live in
and I never thought a mile would last a lifetime
Your shoes have never fit so well

And I cannot speak unless I am spoken to
provoking your own words to seep into the hollow cavities of me
injecting control into my gums until my roots have been decayed
You always said that my mouth was full of garbage
but I am only spewing out what I have been fed
Your mistakes have stained my lips
as if the aftertaste is a reminder of redemption

I am forced to wear guilt as a bib
So why do you still baby me?
I have been birthed with fault
and raised to believe that I was my own weakness
Before my legs were not strong enough to hold my weight,
You anchored my future with anxiety of separation
but it’s time that you let me find my own…

balance.

You pulled each and every one of my strings with stubbornness;
I had no option but to move in that given direction because
you
were my technical creator

Dad, I long for the days where I can finally break free from these shackles of dominance
but these strings on my back are like a crucifix:
a burden that I have to carry

These nails have hammered defeat into my wrists
and my spine has been fashioned into the backbone of a white flag,
forcing me to stand erect when
I already have been annihilated

I will not be a casualty in this war
I would rather walk away with a victory
than throw in the towel

Have you ever witnessed a puppet defeat its own master?

Don’t fall in love with a boy in Vegas
because chances are
he will gamble your feelings away into stardust
and say that they’re trapped in the neon signs
that border the city
as if wearing your heart on your sleeve
isn’t advertisement enough

He will leave your chest cavity bankrupt
and his hollow words will feel fragile
like the cheap jewelry he adorned you with
because to him
that is all you are worth

At the bar,
he will be 
irresistibly smooth
like the martini he ordered for you
that strategically
flirted with your taste buds
He will lick the insides of your cheekbones dry with charm
as if he’s carefully tracing your insecurities with his tongue
He will park his compliments into you like a valet
You are just a service to him
as you swoon with envy
for the woman that actually ties him down

He’ll look at you with parenthesis
as if you’re supposed to fill in the gap
You are just a footnote in his paragraph:
A thought almost complete enough to make sense with the rest of the story

He will fold the corners of you favorite pages
while you exchange kisses like gunfire
and when did your hotel room become a battlefield?
Because this is a war your body wants to surrender to

He’ll whisper his table of contents into your ear
and italicize your hips
with emphasis
until you moan his title into the sheets
He will pry your bible open until you beg for forgiveness
then baptize you into an entirely new religion

He will crucify you in all the right places

But he won’t remember your name in the morning
and the only thing he left behind is the imprint of an apology
in the shape of his body in the mattress
You will wake up feeling like a crumpled piece of paper
that he shredded with disdain
and in the trash can,
you’ll find a used condom
full of trust,
commitment;

everything he promised to give you but didn’t