Helium

by Rudy Francisco

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.

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

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.

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 enjoy frozen yogurt, people-watching, and laughing for absolutely no reason at all, but I don’t allow myself to cry as often as I need to.

I have solar-powered confidence and a battery-operated smile.

don’t know much, but I do know this: Heaven is full of music, and God listens to my heartbeat on his iPod. It reminds him that we still got work to do.

I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike. Scared, but reckless. With no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you.

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

Vanish They will push you away, tell you to leave, but have no idea how good you are at following instructions. When you vanish, but your ghost becomes a guest they cannot get rid of and the memory of you plays resurrection with their smile, they will ask where you went, if you will come back and why you gave up so easily, as if they didn’t own the voice that requested your disappearance. They now know solitude does not scare people like us and our absence is something that we are not afraid to give to those who call for it.

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

I’ll keep you here. Shackled to the most important chapter of my life story, pressed into the basement of my eyelids like liquid salvation so I remember you beautiful. With amazing underneath your wings and an orchid smile. You gorgeous earthquake. You cracked hourglass with sand spilling from behind your ribs. You wasted my time.

Two: If I ever see you in the street, I’m probably going to punch you in the throat. Three: I apologize in advance. And I know that it makes no sense to have this much anger toward a man that I have never met face to face, but my definition of love is being robbed in an alley eight times in a row and hoping there’s something about today that makes all of this different.

Four: 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.

Five: Cupid is irresponsible, and I’m tired of him using me for target practice.

To You He puts guilt in the air and waits for you to breathe, tries to tailor the blame until it looks like it fits you, turns the story into a gymnast and convinces it to flip. He rewinds the movie, excavates the plot, digs out your patience, makes himself the narrator and the hero. He sketches you as the antagonist and suddenly his transgressions become deleted scenes. He blames you for his sadness. And this is how the wolf cries boy.

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.

Once, a friend of a friend asked me why there aren’t more black people in the X Games and I said, “You don’t get it.” 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.

Mercy after Nikki Giovanni She asks me to kill the spider. Instead, I get the most peaceful weapons I can find. I take a cup and a napkin. I catch the spider, put it outside and allow it to walk away. If I am ever caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, just being alive and not bothering anyone, I hope I am greeted with the same kind of mercy.

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.

Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There’s water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining.

Remember, you will survive, things could be worse, and we are never given anything we can’t handle. When the whole world crumbles, you have to build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember, you are still here. The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words “You are still alive.” You are still alive. So act like it.