Helium

by Rudy Francisco

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.

The words “I am” are slowly transforming into “I used to be” because every year, the past tense finds a larger house inside the neighborhood of my everyday vernacular.

I hope I haven’t already driven past my greatest moments.

My hobbies include: editing my life story, hiding behind metaphors, and trying to convince my shadow that I’m someone worth following.

Alternatives to “Bae” The one who wins all of the arguments, the keeper of the remote, the girl who turns my stomach into a butterfly nest, the pink Starburst, the one I will always choose first no matter what else is in the pack, the red Kool-Aid, the right amount of sugar, the pulp, the part that makes the juice seem real.

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.

My brain is a revolver with “Am I good enough?” in every chamber.

Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America. We don’t need to invent new ways of risking our lives because the old ones have been working for decades.

To the Man Standing on the Corner Holding the Sign That Said “God Hates Gays” 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 c...

Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address.