2015 Feature

Here are a few of my favorite deviations that were made or I found in 2015 I hope you enjoy!

     <da:thumb id="392360558"/>    <da:thumb id="487890627"/>      old wives' taleopposites do not attract.
me, with my soft body
does not want your hard
hands, fists around my
throat.
bathtub sunk, i stay
at the bottom and
watch peach bubbles pop
on my skin. your needle-
nails puncture the
fruit of me. suck the
juice from me. water-
logged, i hop on my
left foot. tilt
to shake you from me.
you are vicious and
sharp. the Anger. i am candy
floss, gummy teeth. the Sadness.
you lick your fingers
clean of me
drop my clothes
on the pantry floor.
     <da:thumb id="541183980"/>  <da:thumb id="537611513"/>   yesterday."to make a daisy chain, you have to kill the flower," he says absentmindedly, elbows-and-knees deep in the rushing waves of summer field grass. 
"no, you don't," I insist. my back is pressed to the bark of the tree behind me and the summer sun is caramel yellow on my skin. I'm thirteen, naive, soft-centered. at this point in my life, I have let no one break my heart or ruin the neat tight zippers of my long skirts.
"yes, you do." to prove his point, he wrenches a flower from the soil, taking up a clod of roots with it. teasingly, he shakes it in front of my eyes, dusts me with the dirt--I squeal girlishly and brush myself off. then his smile fades; his fingernail slits the daisy's slick stem. with perhaps more force than is necessary, he stabs a second daisy's stem through the tiny hole. "see?"
"well. okay. I guess you do need to kill it. but who cares?"
he shrugs. he's already turned his attention to the sea of weeds all around us. for a while I sit cross-legged next to him, watc     <da:thumb id="549615782"/>
     <da:thumb id="553151472"/>        <da:thumb id="540086878"/>  
this earth is the culmination of what we've becomeif you've ever wondered how the world
sounds as it turns, i can tell you;
it sounds like water
dripping
out of the faucet. it sounds like the ticking
of the clock on the kitchen wall,
steady and neverending. it sounds like the soft
and silent breathing of someone
sleeping soundly. it sounds
like home.
and if you've ever wondered how the world
feels as it turns, i can tell you;
it feels like a child's
hug, small arms around your neck. it feels like
summer sun on your face, warm
and light. it feels like a cold drink of water
on a parched throat, soothing
and silky like drenched
winter air. it feels
like home.
and if you've ever wondered how to tell
when you're home, i can tell you;
if you're happy, you are.   Unintended FreedomThe person waiting for you on the right side
Of every wrong turn
Is dead.
You will never be her;
She was only a frail figment,
Pigmenting your notions of who you thought
You ought to be.
Her loves are not your loves.
Her dreams are your delusions.
Her hopes are the nightmares you wake up
Groping from.
Rejoice, fortune has cut you off
From the misfortune of becoming
Who you imagined you should become.     i wantall i can ever taste are
fragmented sentences and 
there are battle scars like cuts 
on my tongue from the words
that could never tumble out 
like the rest
can you hear the cliché of a writer writing
about writing? can you feel the rays of light
hit your eyeballs and ricochet right back into
the page again?
(tell me: can you smell the ink on my breath?)
i want to feel so choked up and so much like
i'm drowning that the only thing i can think
about doing is writing and
i want to fall asleep singing poems in my head
again, and, and 
(i want to stretch my hands and touch
pen to paper and fingers to keyboard
and i want to write without the guilt
burning my throat)
(i want to write without touching backspace)         crying.I can’t feel sad when I hear the kid I sat next to in Creative Writing class just killed himself over the holiday. It just isn’t my problem.
I shouldn’t cry when I remember the last thought I had of my grandpa before he died was how much I hated him. I should be over it by now.
I can’t keep a diary or make paintings about how I feel or speak up when I’m sad or, really, feel sad at all. That just makes me a pussy.
Just because you think men should be monsters - robotic, barbaric, petty, deranged little monsters - doesn’t mean you’re right.
--
No, I’m not going to stop talking about my feelings just yet.
I might be acting irrational, but I’m not going to change just yet.
If you’re uncomfortable, you can just leave.
--
I can handle it on my own. I'll get over it.
That is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. And I believed it for so long.
--
When I say I’m sad, I don’t want a solution. I don’t wan
     <da:thumb id="515930324"/>          bad circulation"when you are dangling upside down
fifteen thousand feet in the air
and the clouds have their cold fingers
pressed against your throbbing neck
and your heart is about to fall out of your
throat, remember to breathe."
i am inhaling so deeply it burns my nose,
i have choked on my tears in a bubble
bath up to my cheekbones and i am
opening each new day languidly, scratching
at the corners and dropping eyelids
and thoughts in the middle of class.
i am biting the insides of my cheeks
and falling asleep inside my hood on
the bus, because dragging my feet along
the floor and grinding my teeth just
isn't cutting it anymore,
how can you feel so much and
then be told to feel so little?
i refuse to say sorry.
but i know that too often, i plant gardens
in places where desolation is desired,
i kiss people too late, or not at all,
and i know
i know,
that i am not enough 

   an open letter to my twelve year old selfone day you will cut all your hair off,
and hang up a map of the world in your
room and  you will look at it on days
you think your life is going nowhere.
i hate to tell you this, but this isn’t
your worst year. it also isn’t your
best.
one day you will cut all your hair off
and realize that some poems need to be read
out loud, to an audience, so you’ll take a hammer
and some nails and build yourself one
out of a girl whose veins look fragile but
whose bones are strong, a boy who isn’t as tall as
he thinks he is, but whose lifelines are the deepest
you’ve ever seen, and a girl whose eyes remind you of the
east coast shore.
one day you will cut all your hair off,
and learn that you can like pink
just as much as you like blue
and the world will not fall apart
along its fault lines. there are other flags
you can wave with pride that
aren’t American.
one day you will cut all your hair off
and figure out how to forgive yourself,
figure out how to sta   <da:thumb id="467955973"/>            <da:thumb id="434525026"/>