the secret? I hate marigolds

 A garden is a product of time

To that I say

Worms are History

And I've been split in half

As a child I was Marigolds

I am Marigolds still

Born of the seeds left behind

Year by Year a new generation

the same weeds

different weeds

the same sun

different days

Wondering

If I will ever stop needing water

What business does a Marigold have

Wondering

If it will ever become a Rose

Space Junk

maybe I'm space junk

sad pictures of worthless objects

orbiting in a galaxy of stars

today my anger is a plastic water bottle

victim to science

and the endless vacuum of space

I didn't go to work today

because my science forgot to make the motivation chemical

there is electricity in my brain

I have neurons and I don't know what that means

my depression 

is a water bottle in space

what a journey it is

to be human

were that I could bottle the lamplight of my childhood

 2 a.m. 

always buzzes and burns
I wish it was Christmas
I wish I was small
I wish my problems were bead collections
reading books by lamplight
I wish my mama peeked in my room periodically still
I wish I was scared of the toilet

instead 

I am 23
everything is scarier at 23
the dark never gets brighter because you get older
bandaids don't appear when you need them
adults talk to me now
like I don't need protecting 
I would have fought for that at 15

at 13 

I had grown up too fast
trauma opening doors to maturity
at 23 I'm stuck at age 12
reliving the worst days of my life every fall
and my mama
no longer peeks her head through my door

pink feathers

"they're real!" a little girl shouts

Running at the flamingo enclosure 

I wish I was her 

Finding out the Lord made room for pink feathers

self worth and narcissus in the lake - 2019

when I look in the mirror
I see not myself
but a woman I have long judged through the eyes of others

how is it so
that I might know what they see when they
look
upon me

I have only ever been me
and my judgments are not theirs

it matters not
because my smile is not my own
my eyes send shivers down my spine for the disconnect I gaze into

my face could be
a painted portrait of a woman lost
for the familiarity I find in her smile

I worry I have become vain
for the thrill I seek in my cheekbones
for the butterflies that take flight from my flirtatious smile

because
when the woman in the mirror
is not me
she breathes the very essence of beauty

she is
the embodiment of speech
flowering syllables over gilded pages and gilded frames

a goddess
hidden among the mortals

when
I erase my name
from the face I see
she is
everything an angel might be

only

if

I am not her

because

when she gains
a name

she is me
not
the pinnacle of divinity
not
mother nature's tender creation
not
anything
a loving
living
God could create

when
she is me
she is nothing
but a face
in the mirror

memory is a certain immortality

all my life you have been a place

an event a person a thing

you're gone now 

reborn to moments and memories 

you are where I remember you

so I choose sunlight

flower petals

warmth after a cold day

 I love you

   you live where I live

      within

          a second life

             a second death

         beside me

I remember you brought the sunset

they adorned her in yellow

her smile was nervous and fragile and proud

how has she not cut herself on her double edged sword

how has she hidden the scars so well

they pulled her hair back

it said no

slipped out of the plastic pink clips

she was beautiful

her wrists are bone

her eyes are hollow

her smile is full of tragedy

I'm not ready

please I'm not ready

Grief: Noun

 

 grief is not my mantle

 a flame that burns within

 

it is not a lifestyle a mood a circumstance a feeling

 it is every moment I have ever lived 

 

all at once

 

my hands empty

 of the thing I have lost

desperation

I've never know time by her name

Never flown and let myself drown

How could I begin to guess the seconds of sand given to us

Like stars, numberless in the heavens 

I was promised a lifetime

To God that means anything

I'm beginning to feel like forgiveness is weighing

I need to let go

Before I become someone anew

Before I drown the parts of me that need forgiving with you

 

I was promised a lifetime

Nobody knows what that means

I can't say I forgive you

So here you are

Dying

Always getting the last word