My body
not her choice
Her body
not his choice
Not my body
it was his choice
His choice
not her body
not really
– R.A. Murphy
Author’s Note: This is my first published piece and I have hopes for many more. I worked for a year and a half as a social worker for a sexual violence resource center in my college town. I only worked there for a relatively short time, but that type of work stays with you forever. Nothing will wash away the feeling of someone holding your hand while they’re getting a rape kit completed in the emergency room. And I think it’s supposed to be like that for a reason.… ...continue reading
I’m just a servant
Who serves these
Words,
Inky sentiments,
Nearly sentient-
And the mind
Works on her own time,
Sometimes,
She works against mine.
I’m just a maid
Who cleans up after these
Thoughts ablaze
And they swarm
Like bees in a summer haze,
You cannot force them in a cage,
And sometimes they say messy things
So,
Someone must oversee them.… ...continue reading
the collar i turn up
against the cold
reminds me
draws me back
to a life
before
when
rushing cold against my skin
meant you
drawing near to share
your warmth
your life
cascading
out of control
drew me to
its flame
its fury
its fate
sealed
by visions
and missions
and empty streets
in dark
of night
falling
about us
capturing heart and soul
entwined
in this dance
of despair… ...continue reading
Lost amidst the sea and swirls
I am floating past gates of white
Misty waters and depths below
Seal my fate / a weeping demise.
Washed ashore / the aflame home
My brethren trudge past mud and sticks
(They’re all knowing and yet none-the-wiser)
I am found beneath sand and drunken tidepools.
Awakened through a crack / beating sunlight
Gathers the souls of my people… my people…
Dark mouths stretched across
Leering into saltwater sacrifices.… ...continue reading
My college history teacher said:
white flour fed oppression—
a false staple that starved nations
while filling the conqueror’s plate
Empty offerings persist,
served now on Styrofoam:
flimsy triangles of dough,
sides of ranch dressing,
class sets with covers that read
Of Mice and…,
corners curled, pages thinning—
a curriculum worn down
to a narrow canon
classrooms frigid in winter,
stifling in early summer.… ...continue reading
My dear, I have become an expert on you.
The survival of my love requires new skin
to hold the pigments of you,
a mechanism in your design:
one that absorbs your light
and then reflects it back out,
steeped in all your colors.
Chameleon—
study in your iridescence,
if only to animate your face in mine,
that singular expression.
I’ve assembled it a hundred times
on features that do not belong to you
but ache to see you,
speak to you,
know you—… ...continue reading
It all happened in a little blue house.
I find that detail important, because everything was blue.
The walls, the furniture, the bed.
I began to see nothing but blue.
Feel nothing but blue until eventually I was suffocating because I forgot that humans can’t breathe underwater.
I tried to mend together the sun and the ocean
Tried to convince them they belong together.
That one cannot exist without the other.
But how do you mend a hole in the sky when your thread is made of sand that crumbles when you pick it up.
How do you wish the sun to save you when you’ve forgotten what it looks like?
– T. Martin
Author’s Note: “Blue” is about the house I lived in during the worst time of my life.… ...continue reading