walls.

​

the night after the abortion

I drive him to his night shift

We share a car ride and a loss.

The doctor said

I wasn’t supposed to operate a vehicle.

I did not listen.

We cut the silence in the air with our favorite songs

I crave returning to normal just as much

as he does. to skip over the recovery.

A desire to speed up to get to the rest of this life there is to live

after giving away another life

​

He holds my hand and asks me what is on my mind.

I clutch his fingers for the 8 minutes left I have with him in our night

after not having a hand to hold for the first 8 hours of my day

And a busy front desk and a wait time and no food in my system

The cold walls of the clinic stamping a shiver in my skin

They ask me if I want to see a photo of “it” & I oblige.

I don’t want to regret the only chance to meet a part of me

I will never know. I tuck a print copy of this part of me away

He asks me what is on my mind and no words spill from my tongue

the image of my own blood stains on a clinic floor woven into my memory

from a mishandled needle and a distracted nurse.

She said, Sorry.

asks me why my IV isn’t placed right

I don’t know much in this moment

but I do know a thing or two about neglect.

I remember the horror movie playing in the final waiting room

before the procedure and remembered how

the world will never make loss easier

​

To become a statistic means

blood stains on the floor.

shaky thighs & a heavy sedation.

A knockout and a loss,

and a “have a great day”

As your loopy, dizzy body

finds its way home to

carry on

​

Thank goodness I can carry on

For those who could not.

For those who had no choice.

For Mariah in the waiting room whose mother

​

my sedated body remembers

what it was like to

Have a part of me removed from within and

Replaced with a gap

​

He asks me what is on my mind,

One forehead kiss, and an embrace,

and a closed car door

I ride home in silence

A road to recovery unfolding itself

in front of my eyes.

​

I say a prayer in your memory

I call you seed

I remember once again what it feels like to

Lose another part of myself.

​

​

SUPERNOVA

​

Submerge me,

let me float into your love like

–seaweed,

loyal to mother nature’s drift

or God’s script

written for us on papyrus

​

When I say I love you,

I mean–

that you are no natural disaster,

but I will willfully drown into you,

for you are breath found underneath a deep dive,

an oxygen tank of promise and poetry

​

When I say I miss you,

I mean that once,

after my demons buried me

underneath parched soil,

My corpse, lay as bare bones

and those bare bones

resurrected themselves

in a ceremony

to become your rib.

​

When I say I feel you

I mean, in our third iteration

I remember when you found me,

in a milky way sky,

where my cotton dress hem,

was caught on the tip of a crescent moon,

and you ever so gently

led us back down to Earth

down ladders of constellations

No sorrows or sin gathered along the way

​

When I say I am yours,

I mean that I was crafted perfectly

to fit the paper mache mold of your skin

and together we are sculptures,

dipped in sea salt,

blessed by moonshine and holy water.

​

When I say take me,

I mean, braille this skin,

Learn me into love

Memorize these machete cut wounds until

there is nothing left to heal

for you are breath, trespassing into lungs

​

So when I say I love you,

I mean–

I will spoken word your name

into a lavender Los Angeles sunset sky,

I will speak to Creator

on a summer time southern porch

when the Earth is

s   i   l   e   n   t

​

and I will say,

God must really love me

if she chose to star stud you

as supernova

into my constellation.