how to survive the unsurvivable or what I do while waiting for the world to regain its color

scrollthrough the photosapp on my phone28,000 pictures and counting-delete duplicatesthe way I want to disappear myself(but I’m not a copy)stareat an image that appears inarguably beautifulor one in which I dorelish in howmy eyes see splendoreven through all the bullshiteven though somedays they can’t on those days death feels like a long awaited pause buttona

The future is crowdsourced.

we pick each other ‘s brains like wildflowers. capitalism has never been tender with us so we are relentlessly soft with one another. This system leaves us for dead but we keep bringing each other nourishment gift-wrapped as laughter. we keep bringing each other Alive.

Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t make it fake news.

I speak a poem about my childhood trauma and you don’t like the culpability you say you have different opinions of my past I say I think you mispronounced, “this isn’t how I imagined my legacy” mispronounced, “I made you in my image who are you to be a visionary not just (my) vision?” Mom,

the first person in the bloodline to analyze their trauma does so after causing their weight in it.

for years I became the shape of my anguish. I wasn’t just hurt. I was the hurt. when you are the wound and the salt you would do anything to stop the hellfire you have become but not before you enact the pain, make it reverberate into someone else’s lap say heavy say here say

My least favorite thing about being an artist is continually convincing myself I am not one.

Imposter syndrome taunts in a voice that sounds exactly like mine. Anxiety hands it a microphone. ADHD plays 52 card pick up with my thoughts- hyperfixates on negativity. Invisible illness renders me too damn tired to fight back. Capitalism builds an entire amphitheater for the performance finds a way to fill the seats and profit

An eclipse creates a shadow and wonders why it looks like that

I knew you were afraid of falling in love. I never said (but I wanted to say,) “don’t. don’t fall in love. stand up in it.” an eclipse reminds me that when you lose enough of something it becomes something else. I came to you entirely terrifying and at just the wrong enough time for

it’s been a year of years.

time, head down concentrating- lacing their shoes like a fever-dream I trip over sometimes, I look at the people I love and I see cheekbones and eyelashes. smiles brave and worn. In recent weeks I smile at myself in the mirror every single time I step out of the shower. (it’s liberating to unhold a

“Our tongues have a cadence.”

They move to whatever they move to and I don’t think we’ve taught them how to roll stack slide swirl push p u l l play so effortlessly off of and on top of around but never at expense of one another. their synchronicity teaches me to displace my worry of where things will go

My shame is a mold that only grows in the parts of me I refuse to shed light on

refuse to talk about. I need a better flashlight a braver mouth a new dictionary to find fresh words to form familiar sounds in new ways. I write a lot of poems about growth but have you ever loved something so much you didn’t notice it never loved you back? sometimes, I’m so focused on

I write the wrong poem and it scores well

every season I compete with it. a few seasons in I write the one I finally mean on a subject previously too scared to touch Ironically about a time I was too scared to touch (and in both cases I didn’t speak up until) I touch stage, kill the poem the audience exactly the right