hello.
when i say hello, i mean thank you.
when i say thank you, i mean i adore you.
and when i say i adore you, i mean i will check your horoscope.
i mean when you leave the balloons that you carry in your laughter behind on my ceiling,
well, i like them better than flowers.
my body is a garden rooted in gratitude.
thank you is the biggest poem i’ve got inside of me.
me? i am a campfire cold hearts like to sit around and roast their marshmallows in. but
when i say campfire, i mean tiny furnace, little light lady. i mean i am not the path
of least resistance.
but i swear, i was struck by lightning. bang! boom! wow! this one time at Coachella when
Jay-Z brought out Beyonce - i mean, i am flawless...procrastinator.
my heart is a messy bedroom i always distract myself from cleaning. i digress...
when i say Beyonce came out, i mean fireworks went off and i cried.
when i say i cried, i mean i taught the clouds how to cry for me, dig?
i wouldn’t say i’m sensitive, i would say i’m highly susceptible to feeling a lot,
and sometimes, “sometimes there just ain’t enough rocks.” Forrest Gump.
when i say my feelings are a box of chocolates, i mean i like to eat them.
i also like to get high enough to look myself in the third eye. but when i say i like to
get high, i mean, sometimes, after i shower i thank the towel.
snap, crackle, or pop? me? pop. i mean i’ve got this violent tendency to see a bubble
and want to pop it. which is to say: i have held love, but i popped it and locked it,
then dropped it and lost it. i didn’t mind.
love made me feel like i knew the answer, but when i raised my hand, i was the only
one in the room.
what i mean is have you ever felt the ache of swallowing starlight? that cinnamon heartburn?
what i mean is his name is still a plate set at the table of my tongue because i learn love
like wait for it.
if i called the last person you said i love you to could they tell me they felt it?
can you feel this?
i’m allergic to liars, they cause my tongue to swell and sharpen; bullet flesh tongue.
i mean my kiss tastes like a shotgun to the lips. you’ll like it. it’ll make you
feel brave. my first crush was on Benny ‘The Jet’ Rodriguez, i swear, that boy ran so
fast, he could fly by foot.
i always say i am a hummingbird.
but when i say hummingbird, i mean sometimes my hands forget how to hold,
become two teacups in an earthquake.
my body is a rattle of splintered bones.
but when i say my body, i mean blunt guts and then some.
my body, miraculous. i spent an entire year sleeping on a bed of swords and was not cut
once.
what i mean is my lonely looks a lot like insomnia when you hold it up to the light.
what i mean is if i came to you lonely as a grocery store parking lot at 5am, blowing
smoke rings pretending they are halos, could you believe in the magic?
not beauty, not the beast, i’m talkin’ enchanted castle.
i mean, my body: space jam.
my body has ways to tell anything else than the truth: flight response.
hey, do you ever just sit on the end of your bed and listen to the world spin? i hear that
song everywhere.
but when i say that song, what i mean is time.
time is a holy catastrophe of heirloom clock faces that don’t fit my wrists, dig.
the only instrument i know how to play is my body.
i like my body best when i am not worried about how much space it’s taking up. i mean
dancing.
but when i say dancing , i mean shimmy-and-a-shake-and-a-wop-wop-drop.
my body’s got moves y’all, like it sleeps in a waterbed. what i mean is my body sleeps
in itself.
i am best prepared for the worse case scenario.
the best case scenario scares me. flight response.
my mother tells me i am a bird.
but when she says i am a bird, she means the whole world is my cage.
in my dreams, i can fly, and there is no such thing as cage, meaning there is no such thing
as time.
i have been here before.
i mean, i recognize that moon. and i know,
i know there are many moons, and my gratitude it eclipses them all.
so, i say thank you.
i say thank you, but i guess i just mean - hello.