Helium

by Rudy Francisco

Do you know the human body is approximately sixty percent water? When I walk into a room full of people, all I see is an ocean.

Good Morning Get out of bed. The day has been asking about you. It dragged the sun into your room this morning, pulled an entire disco of light through your curtains, hoping that all of this gleam would be enough to get your attention. This is how today says, notice me.

Page It just sits there, with a mouth full of entitlement, staring at you and wondering why it is still not a masterpiece.

Let’s just go. Drive until our troubles phantom in the rearview mirror and we forget they exist, at least for a moment.

Horizon I hope I haven’t already driven past my greatest moments. I hope there is something beautiful on the horizon that’s just as impatient as I am. Something so eager, it wants to meet me halfway. A moment that is diligently staring at its watch, trembling with nervousness, frustrated, and bursting at the seams, wondering what’s taking me so long to arrive.

Instructions Gather your mistakes, rinse them with honesty and self-reflection, let dry until you can see every choice and the regret becomes brittle, cover the entire surface in forgiveness, remin...

I’ve never been in the military, but I have a purple heart: I got it from beating myself up over things that I can’t fix.

I promise I will love you as if it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correctly.

Petal The tongue has a jagged beauty and I know how easily the mouth can become a rose bush.

If I was a love poet, I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful even on days when everything around you is ugly.

I know this is going to sound weird, but sometimes, I pray that God somehow turns you back into one of my ribs just so I would never have to spend an entire day without you.

Sinking I held you the way a boat holds water. I should have left when I felt us sinking.

When People Ask How I’m Doing I want to say, my depression is an angry deity, a jealous god a thirsty shadow that wrings my joy like a dishrag and makes juice out of my smile. I want to say, getting out of bed has become a magic trick. I am probably the worst magician I know. I want to say, this sadness is the only clean shirt I have left and my washing machine has been broken for months, but I’d rather not ruin someone’s day with my tragic honesty so instead I treat my face like a pumpkin. I pretend that it’s Halloween. I carve it into something acceptable. I laugh and I say, “I’m doing alright.”

Mess On the day you couldn’t hold yourself together anymore, you called for me, voice cracking like two sets of knuckles before an altercation. I found you, looking like a damaged wine glass. I hugged your shatter. I cut all of my fingers trying to jigsaw puzzle you back together. When it was...

Why Did You Leave? Because you wouldn’t let me love both of us at the same time.

You want to know how I got these scars? I swallowed my pride. It clawed its way out of my mouth.

There is nothing rational about love. Love stutters when it gets nervous, love trips over its own shoelaces. Love is clumsy, and my heart refuses to wear a helmet.

Haunted On days like this, I am the house and the ghost, responsible for my own haunting. My brain is a revolver with “Am I good enough?” in every chamber. So I turn into a factory that only makes the word “yes” and I say it until it can easily be mistaken for the truth, but my voice shakes and the answer still sounds like a question.

I was taught that a woman’s vagina is just an underground railroad to masculinity, that real men have tunnel vision and treat girls like subway cars, like nothing more than a space to parallel park our genitals,

Windows and Mirrors There was a moment in my life when I couldn’t tell the difference between a window and a mirror. I could look into both and see everything but myself.

I wonder what she carries in the luggage underneath her eyes.

To Him I’m just sorry that she had to be your fortune cookie. Broken so you could learn a lesson you already should’ve known.

Skin II When you are the only black man in the whole neighborhood, your skin is that one friend who meets everyone before you do. It wears a wife beater and house shoes, it knocks over the neighbor’s mailbox, it cusses in front of the kids and plays the music too loud, but you actually don’t do any of those things. It’s 7 pm. It’s Wednesday and you are just walking home.

it must be nice to feel so safe, you have to invent new ways to put yourself in danger.

Every time you speak, you are preparing a meal, the conversation is a dinner party and you are the chef, just hoping that you used all the correct ingredients.

I’ve never seen exactly who it is that you paperclip your knees, meld your hands together, and pray to but I think I know what he looks like: I bet your God is about 5’10”. I bet he weighs 185. Probably stands the way a high school diploma does when it’s next to a GED. I bet your God has a mullet. I bet he wears flannel shirts with no sleeves, a fanny pack, and says words like “getrdun.” I bet your God watches FOX news, Dog the Bounty Hunter, voted for Donald Trump, and loves Bill O’Reilly. I bet your God is a politician from Arizona. I bet his high school served racism in the cafeteria and offered “hate speech” as a second language. I bet he has a swastika inside of his throat and racial slurs tattooed to his tongue just to make intolerance more comfortable in his mouth. I bet he has a burning cross as a middle finger and Jim Crow underneath his nails. Your God is a Confederate flag’s wet dream. Conceived on a day when the sky decided to slice her own wrists. I bet your God has a drinking problem. I bet he sees the bottom of the shot glass more often than his own children. I bet he pours whiskey on his dreams until they taste like good ideas, probably cusses like an electric guitar with Tourette’s plugged into an ocean. I bet he yells like a schizophrenic nail gun, damaging all things that care about him enough to get close. I bet there are angels in Heaven with black eyes and broken halos who claimed they fell down the stairs. I bet your God would’ve made Eve without a m...

Brother When I call you brother, it means you have at least four fists during any fight you can’t talk yourself out of.

Sister When I call you sister. It means I broke the boy’s arm when he touched you without your permission. I’m so...

I turned his nose into a fountain. My fist was five pennies.

we learn that the heart is the same size as the fist, but we keep forgetting they don’t have the same functions.

I am learning that the difference between a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground.

Simeona My mother wears her wrinkles the way an ocean wears a wave. She is the only body of water that refuses to let me drown.

I Bet the Trees Are Thinking If they’re willing to pay three dollars a gallon for gas, imagine how much we can charge them for oxygen.

I wonder how long it will take the planet to tell us we can’t live here and the locks are changed.

I wonder if my grandkids will ever throw a penny in a fountain and hear it splash.

Forgiveness is the well that all of my water comes from. I pour it over my past, apologize to my reflection. He accepts.

Capacity Today, I’m trying to perfect the art of enjoying my own company. I am exercising isolation and letting it flex in front of the mirror like my proudest muscle. Some days, it’s just me by myself, the room is at capacity and there is nothing more enticing than silence.

Strength I convinced my fist that it was a flower. I relaxed, it bloomed and I forgave you ...

Silence I’m learning that I don’t always have to make noise to be seen, that even my silence has a spine, a rumble and says, I’m here in its native tongue.

Complainers On May 26th, 2003, Aaron Ralston was hiking, a boulder fell on his right hand, he waited four days, he then amputated his own arm with a pocketknife. On New Year’s Eve, a woman was bungee jumping, the cord broke, she fell into a river and had to swim back to land in crocodile-infested waters with a broken collarbone. Claire Champlin was smashed in the face by a five-pound watermelon being propelled by a slingshot. Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin. David Striegl was actually punched in the mouth by a kangaroo. The most amazing part of these stories is when asked about the experience they all smiled, shrugged and said “I guess things could’ve been worse.” So go ahead, tell me you’re having a bad day. Tell me about the traffic. Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into 7 am and the crash totaled your happiness. Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. When Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted she didn’t speak for 48 hours. When my uncle was murdered, we had to send out a search party to find my father’s voice. Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address. When your day is a museum of disappointments, hanging...