c-poetjoycciwi

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I have no doubt in my mind we’re intertwined and made for something more than this.

You whisper ‘I can’t wait to spend these years together.’ Years- God- years? You plan on staying that long? I’d love to please-

‘It feels like you’re about to propose-‘ after listing off aspects I adore of her with half closing eyes and an affection-filled heart. And god would I if I was any less mature than an average nineteen year old.

We’re going to throw the best Halloween party- we’re going to have an amazing time at Christmas- we’re going to grow together and learn together and be here for each other through it all-

You are my freaking person and I want everyone to know it. So go ahead, want me, tell her, go on. It won’t change the fact I’m on the phone with the person who plans to spend their days and nights by my side-

I love you and I tell you that with confidence and a multitude of definitions behind the word itself- I know you don’t simply hear the words, you hear my poetic nature behind every inflection. And this is why I say I love you.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

She tells me she loves me with a voice of sincerity- adding my name at the end for good measure or in case I was mistaken.

I’d say there’s something spiritual in feeling understood, in being that close to another person almost as if you are becoming them.

Nothings too much for conversation. Everything’s too much for my head. She tells me exactly what I need to hear and gives me permission to rest in reassurance.

Somehow I have multiple people looking out for me, telling me they want to be the one I learn with, explore and try things alongside. I appreciate it beyond measure-

However she’s the one I return to at the end of the day and can’t help but wish she were there when I fumble. Only she knows how nervous I am to see their eyes again at work today.

I can already imagine the lengthy updates and messages I’ll give sitting in my car when I leave today. Anticipation and butterflies of unlabeled emotions-

Would you kiss me? I know you would. Knowing so is almost enough in itself to let me collapse and crumble into a heap of embarrassment.

Eyes on me in more than platonic ways and what am I to say about that? I feel like I’m being watched, not in a bad way, but in a way that makes me feel performative somehow.

I would kiss you if my romantic soul would allow it without growing some form of attachment. She is the one I am allowed to be attached to- you- I can’t kiss anyone without writing them more than a few poems to go along with the action and convey every feeling.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I’m learning love has no limits when it comes in the form of its purpose. Anything can come from love and lose its interpretation along the way.

A Bible translated through years of flawed human language- communication is loving, honesty, openness, talking about boundaries and lesbian sex over coffee.

The examples of holy matrimony I have access to have all resolved in hate. Shared smiles and hallway talk makes me feel more at home than my parents loveless existence ever has.

I know they would frown upon me for my feelings, God would disapprove apparently- He was the original definer of pride.

And yet I find more love in when she holds my hands in hers and tells me to breathe than I’ve ever seen in the pictures of my mother’s wedding day.

Whatever this is and will be, clear guidelines with an undefined dynamic is heavenly. I read your mind inside your glowing eyes, and ask what ‘okay’ means.

The bandages on their fingers, sore muscles and confusing poems- so many silent apologies to myself and everything I promised myself I’d be.

I fear I’m betraying my parents purpose for creating a life such as mine. They never meant to conceive someone queer, yet I never meant to live until this year.

Give me your hand. Your other one too. Tell me this is ok and let me believe it. Are my eyes calming to find? Isn’t that some form of intimacy in itself?

Gender and sexuality have never been linear or able to see in monochrome. I’m still learning the names of each color and how to compliment one another in parallel.

I ask if you like me, and you tell me you love me. This is more than I’ve gotten from the so-called certainty that the love a mother has should be.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

“You guys have like- the same eyes”

I turn to them to verify- staring down their irises, circling their pupils with mine.

I think I understand what she means now when she said my eyes were piercing in a way punctures and comforts simultaneously.

Their voice softens, they impale my heart without a single touch and tell me ‘it’s ok.’ Somehow this only makes me terrified to further blink at all.

I love the adrenaline paired with a new smile to memorize. What does this mean? I don’t have many answers.

I think you’re beautiful but not in the same way she is and isn’t that concept so lovely in itself?

My beauty is shared between girls, flowers and Christmas lights. How I hate the way I cherish barely knowing a person only so I can unravel them light by light.

Tell me your pets name again, where you want to live someday, tell me your favorite movie and watch me forget your birthday for the hundredth time.

But for today I don’t even know your favorite color and there’s something oddly attractive in that.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

You can't tell me this and expect me to walk away silent. I am screaming in every emotion, writing in my car, and waiting for the water to calm.

It's only touch, it's only bliss, and the idea that someone wants me in some type of way. Don't look at me like that. Please tell me what I already know.

At the end of the day, we're just people- maybe stupid young adults who are still learning how eye contact can feel like a gunshot to naive young souls.

People are never just people. People are poem-worthy and pretty enough to paint. I watch your face redden and note the way you say 'hello' while thinking 'fuck, I need to write about them,' and kick myself in eye-rolling shame.

I don't think you understand what it means to involve yourself in my becoming.

The intensity of every moment, the wars I'll go through in my mind- in the best and worst ways, I don't seem to know anything. You can't hug me and pretend I won't walk away feeling injected with some sort of drug.

Believe me when I say I'd write for you even before those hallway walks or pink-cheeked chair-stacking conversations. The only difference is, you would have never known.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

How many times can I hear someone compliment my eyes, my body, and my being before I accept that maybe, (just maybe), I am perhaps something worth complimenting.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

Nobody told me what feelings I'm allowed to have. Supposed to have. I'm grasping at straws for the correct answer for my fill-in-the-blank perspective.

May I have a hint? Please- I can't read between the lines, my eyes don't recognize that which is implied-

God has an answer, but it doesn't fit inside my soul, so where am I now? Lost, I guess, that's a feeling I can name. More of an action, as I search for an inkling of an answer in the yellow of her eyes and pray I've assumed right.

I joke I'm going to kill myself, while the feelings become all too overwhelming in a similar fashion as sobbing on my knees. I don't think my body knows the difference between a good emotion and a bad one- there is simply emotion.

And for one who thinks the only way to live is the right way and wants categories and to understand every crevice and follow rules that don't exist- killing myself feels like some form of a rational action in this case. Maybe every case.

She tells me I'm pretty, and I feel like I'm already dying- or dead. The angels I've met have never been in churches- they've been in beds with queer bodies and soft lips.

Their red cheeks let my heart explode, and I'm checking for their words again. God damn it, god damn you. A stupid, wide smile and mirroring eyes- please kill me.

I'd much rather allow you to murder me than touch me; at least that would be a feeling I could understand.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

My feelings are now too large to fit into Tumblr bite-sized poems- yet I will try because if not this, then my words will turn into describing every breath I take for a thousand pages until it folds itself back into what is simply- my life. (If life can ever be described as something simple.)

I am consuming life in all directions and choking on the bone. I am keeping mental bullet points until the bullets go through my brain and out the other side- I am siding with God on this one, humans were never made for this earth.

Oh God, my nails are too long- oh God, she looked at me again. Oh God, we're simply teenagers in broken cars with messed-up faith and sex on our minds. Oh God, how can you ever forgive me for all I haven't let myself feel. Oh God, if I close my eyes, will I wake up to a world I can write for?

[c-poetjoycciwi]

The poem I want to write is the life I'm living.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

The moon floats along side his shitty car. We were supposed to be home by 9, it’s now 2:30 am and I’m reliving a memory I’ll miss by the time I’m home.

I was right. Taco Bell and late night conversations- beer and loosening language, sinning, temptation, confessions and exchanged unreadable glances. Spending more than the night together reading one another’s souls.

I know he’ll confess of us by name on Sunday, but tonight it doesn’t matter. Tonight he can be honest with us and give into stupid sins. Laugh and joke and tell us what he wouldn’t sober or during regular hours of the day.

I know his Catholic guilt consumes every part of his being- he’s been through enough, God, let him rest in good company without constant worry of making it to Heaven. He is, we all know he is. Somehow the passion in his eyes digs its way into my soul and I feel as if Jesus himself as found me through him. As if such a person ever had so much power.

Give me your thoughts, your doubts, your secret wants and judgemental thoughts- tell me how you knew I liked girls from my overalls, how you’re questioning Catholicism and are simply trying to find the truth- how you don’t know anything- but long to know everything.

Now is the time to live out our late night young adult fantasies of existential religious questioning and wishing we were high more often before we die. Now is when we learn what it means to understand one another through the flawed nature of conversation. Now is when God will bless us with his spirit of wisdom- until we forget and relearn as we go. Grow.

Discover what it means to love unconditionally and reach a form of ultimate beauty through sin and one another.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

There is too much femininity to be found in love. Same with clean skin and the color pink. Acne makes me feel boyish. Baggy pants and clumsy walking, writing is too feminine, art is too feminine- I am not a girl, I’m not. This stuffed dinosaur can leave my sight, it’s for girls. I should like dinosaurs though- maybe action movies or sports. I should like girls- and love them- but not enough, but hold doors and kiss well and fuck better- and dream of marriage in a suit and a bow tie, of fatherhood, of a low voice and testosterone, I want to be a brother, a son, a father, a bro, a dude, a guy. Am I there yet? Am I almost there? Ignore my body, ignore the bra under this T-shirt and the lack between my legs. Green is a boys color. I’m almost there I think. I’m almost masculine enough to get to heaven and have God mistake me for the boy he should have created.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I feel the uterus I pretend doesn’t exist as it cramps to warn me my period is coming.

I look in the mirror and see nothing but a boy, an 80’s boy who missed what it was like to be fourteen and fall in love with girls.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I haven’t felt this strong of a distaste for my gender in a few months, I’d say. Maybe a year or so. Staring down myself in the mirror, attempting to mold my cheekbones into something less round.

Something about my grandparents conservative Georgia house and the inescapable fact I was born feminine makes me feel a little more trapped under Gods hateful eye than usual.

My masculine dreams come to fruition with my hair. Long, messy, dark- in a boy way. My face isn’t exactly as feminine, I think it echoes my father. A dark T-shirt and baggy green pants (green is a boys color) to the curves I’ve been blessed with.

She is the only one who manages to still let me feel like a soft, masculine person even with nothing else on. I sing along to man-ish songs and pretend their voices are my own. Take dark selfies in the mirror and pray I’ll be mistaken for a boy tomorrow.

I run my fingers through my hair and sit with my thighs apart. Somehow these bracelets only make me feel more like an 80’s boy. A Jean jacket and a girlfriend- biting my lip and squinting my eyes.

Do I look like one yet? Do I fit in? Ignore the lack between my legs, ignore my blushing smile and female-like breasts. In any other sense of the word I am some form of boy.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

TSA kept the knife you gave me. I forgot it was even in there, it was months ago when I stuffed it in the smallest pocket of my backpack and carried on with my day. You were trying to be kind, a self defense tool for my innocent, naive self who wasn’t sure the first rule of how to use one. You said you would teach me. Damn. It was a pretty good knife, too. But I can’t take it with me.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

My mind unravels its needs like string- a ball of flawed, fraying yarn, Christmas lights flickering in a tangled ball of incomprehensibility.

From becoming paralyzed in the dark, a bed that isn’t mine, of how to write about it all. My breath matches the volume of my brain, all its noise screaming at me to get words out.

Untangle this god damn string, find the loose bulbs, find the broken or missing ones- find yourself.

My boyish hair atop of my homesick head falls in its perfect place across my cheeks. Reddish cheeks, not masculine, but round. My eyebrows soften at the mere concept of her reassurance.

I think I’m failing. I think I’m in Georgia and I miss the stuffed animal in my arms. I think there is too much to say and never enough energy and organization to be able to convey it all.

I’m exhausted of poetry while craving it more than the medication I forget to take. Inject me with its beauty, overwhelm me in its elegance, kill me with its splendor.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I never began to watch Stranger Things until she told me I should. So I did. I’m five episodes and several edge of my seat, teary eyed moments into the show- I think I like it more than I wanted to.

Will is missing and his mother is tearing apart walls to find him. With axes and Christmas lights, ruining her image for the sake of her lost son.

I can only watch with slight jealousy at the knowledge my own mother would never sacrifice herself to such low levels to find me. I’m only me, and she is everything, in her mind.

She would never embarrass herself or make herself look insane if she knew I was alive somewhere. If my body was fake, she wouldn’t even know of the freckle that has always been next to my belly button to check if it was me.

She’d blame herself and lock herself in her room. Maybe take advantage of the free victimhood my death would bring her ego. Oh the flowers she would get on my behalf.

Can I disappear? Would you leave to find me, mom? I know you’d grieve, but would you look?

I am her daughter and that is all. Not someone worth tearing apart walls for.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

My phone says the air quality is shit today. The trees get foggier the further you look-

I wanted to bike though… I haven’t learned to rollerblade yet- I want to open the windows and give myself a breath of fresh air, yet if the air isn’t fresh where is there to go?

If anywhere other than home is unsafe- and home is utterly empty- maybe humanity never belonged to earth in the same way it belongs to the galaxy.