I started writing when I was young, maybe around 9. I was curious and wanted to be self-sufficient; writing became a way for me to learn about the world through my own devices—in a sense.

A Nautical Study of Possession

Air changes in molecular structure
in speech, and tears.
It is well known that
the invention of the ship
came with the invention of shipwreck.
You were a storm.
Fear of obscurity,
locked landlessly, without rescue or compass, no flair.
Hope remains buoyant even in darkness;
As hunger starves in circles, trick.
Words as articulation
of borders, of lack
thereof
the musculature of
your noun, pressed
possessively, into mine.
Transubstantiation with a twist.
Wreck.

An Angry Father

Bandages.
Once removed, delicate, by the ridges of my fingertips
threads of scab like scaffolding
spilled like silk spooling at the ankles of tempt,
exposing firm forgotten land
acres you had hidden away.

Planned loneliness, a consequence.
A line of sea with a saw tooth loose bit peninsula poaching brilliant swells of young coral
ripe with plumage, you were too young.
By the time I found you,
you were riddled with crags and chasms that I could not fill
with skin
or song or sentimental spit.

The house we built was built to slide
out of purchase, we dug
into the abyss that eats old moons
and dirty coffee cups… our midnight smoke feigning dawn.

A-symptomatic
of bloodletting.
Angry grew the father, the further you went.
Pale goes the ghost.

Opiate of optimism, slung between our verse.
Two women trying to change the patron tide.
Brackish were we then, there to try.
Foaming from both ends.

It was not my touch
that sent you to the woods.
It was what we saw underneath
between the cloth and coral
that blemish, that blotched scratching sky you had held back—permanent darkness.
Protecting me, from him, you fled.

Your mortal pearl dusted
in the jaw of poorly lit circumstance.
I am still collecting suns in my freckles
should your lips return
needing
light, again.