Status Updates From When You Ask Me Where I'm G...

on those velvet black nights, when there is only anger in place of poetry, i will paint the walls with my knuckles. my mourning doesn’t know how to sanctify itself. how to dress itself in figurative language and present itself as an aesthetic. the tragedies between these words know how to thunder not only in metaphor.

some of the men
pray for you
prey on you
pray that god will save you
prey that god will break you
pray that they never marry women like you
prey that they tame women like you
pray that their daughters never hear you
prey that their daughters sound nothing like
their mothers

and i show you all the ocean
in my intentions. all the untamed
tides beneath my tongue that will
swallow you before you ever
attempt to master them.

you tell me to take a seat here.
on this pedestal that you have
carefully constructed only to
pull the wooden legs out from
beneath my body when my
mouth no longer forms
the words of your choosing.
you tell me to radiate.
how to radiate.

i am not your poem.
i was never your brushstroke.
i am not your tragedy
or your failed attempts to find meaning.
i was never an answer to a question
so when you ask me like dawn
if i will rise to your occasion
do not be disappointed when i reply
with the dusk that is all i’ve ever known.

the next time you ask me where i’m going
please recall that i am three parts indecision
and one part reckless abandon
that i have seldom bothered to look back
at the wreckage i’ve left in my wake and
will never be bothered to master the flames
at my fingertips anyways

he doesn’t care about politics and i wonder if he can see
the political boundaries on my body—the conflict zones
between my shoulder blades. the border built between my
tongue and me. the partition carved into my palms. all the
ways in which it is political for me to live.

sit in bookstores cross-legged at the
bottom of the shelves. love too many of the books and
take none of them home. your lines don’t usually fill up

always have the right words and seldom has them in
the right order. your commas pretend to be periods
and your metaphors sometimes spill over the edges of
convention

they taught her that
hell existed at the curve
of her waist.

i’m trying to come home to myself
i really am
but you underestimate the wayeyes
can knock on doors and break through
windows and tear down foundations
how eyes can whisper and laugh
and scream
you underestimate the way hate
can pull me to tears and push me to leave
once again.

so roop stares into the bathroom mirror and
prepares her face for a fistfight. the foundation
is two shades too light

Help I’m on a poetry kick and can’t stop