I am broken and no one will let me be see-through

not the sort of broken that you walk by. 

 

I am not an explosion. I am a blade grass, a growth of the Sun 

          that you want to pull out of the earth

          but the roots underneath are too resilient. 

Maybe like a pile of yarn, frayed, piled into shapes and configurations no one has seen before

and everyone is offended. 

 

Like somehow I chose this

like I like I like I like this.

 

 

My muscles turn to icicle

then stay

 

 

 

Cold and hard, immutable

paralyzed as I wait out the shake and shiver of my my bone

rotating my neck in summer heat flash until the great desire 

for kinetic energy

f   a   d   e   s. 

 

And I am a plastic water bottle full to the brim

with answers that want to stay in

with questions I can’t answer.

 

          And no one wants to fill my water bottle.

          Because, see, they might gulp from the canteen of thought

          and leave no gentle words behind

                    no true words, 

                    only pretentious blather,

                    no respect.

 

My water is

               tears from the prospect that I have lost everything.

“I left my keys in a bathtub”

Yeah, and I was the one who found them. 

 

I always seem to find them. 

 

Let me tell you a secret:

          when you stop loving something

          keep it on your keychain 

          until the passion is reignited

          because otherwise you are left

          a twitchy-crying-hot mess-with 2 labs-a quiz-and a test

          and nothing to love.

 

I’ll shower you in mind kisses.

I am not physically affectionate

But my mind kisses

oh they’ll blow you away.

 

What if my fine

          and your fine

are different? 

 

I used to wonder how people could stand, slack-jawed in front of a handless man

and I honestly still don’t understand why everyone is so preoccupied with the swaying of my lips.

The shimmy of my shoulders,

the drawl of my Ts.

 

Like water in my mouth

sloshing about,

absorbed by the sponge of a tongue

thick

a full mouth.

 

Gs taste like balloons 

Ys are effervescent, soap bubbles waiting to pop.

 

yo-o-o

 

I am at a place right in the middle

of let’s do this

and why did I ask for more?

 

I don’t know if I’ll be okay.

But I can say

 

That I want to go on the metro

ride away 

to some Highland Park

a piss-perfumed city square

take me there.

 

I want to float on the asphalt 

away into a colony 

of lepers

their skin rejected by their blood

take me there.

 

To where the pneumonia runs rampant 

and the Hep C is constant

take me there.

 

I will bake cookies

of molasses

of sugar

I will bake for my lepers

 

And I won’t stare at them

 

Not once. 

 

A mouth filled with too many words

not able to speak them all at once. 

Not in love, not in anger,

only of self.

 

Caught up in the back,

a soda pop seal

ready to poppoppop.

 

Erupt out,

a volcano, spewing ash and toxic fumes. 

Mount Rainier is dead, 

Yellowstone has taken her throne.  

All hail the Queen.