Why? You want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself
for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in
coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and
razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are
tight.Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up
and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl
into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch
and whore and worst of all, “a disappointment.” Puke and starve
and cut and drink because you don’t want to feel any of this. Puke
and starve and drink and cut because you need the anesthetic and it
works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by
then it’s too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into
your soul. It is rotting you and you can’t stop.Look in a mirror and
find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everysinglething is
wrong with you.“Why?” is the wrong question. Ask “Why not?”
Wanna know the fucking truth? Nobody is fucking happy. Nobody has skin
made from oil paint and sunlight. Nobody fucking understands this
world. Fuck, nobody probably understands math as much as they claim.
You’re here one day and the next you’re not. God? Religion? I’ve
learned a lot more about the world by eating acid and swallowing
pills. Tell me what your church has done for you? Tell me if you have
holes in your mouth from speaking lies? Wanna know the fucking truth?
Pity is just another word for pathetic. Drink beer and watch the
sunrise from every rooftop. Take photographs naked. Take photographs
kissing. Take photographs having sex. Stop making everything about
sexuality. Wanna know the fucking truth? Nobody really gives a damn if
you lost your virginity at fourteen or if you were the president in
high school. Wanna know the fucking truth? There is no such thing as
the right person. People leave. They change like ocean currents, they
leave you with bruises in your calves. And you wanna know the fucking
truth? You get better. You learn to love. You find God in between the
cracks of a wall when you’re puking your limbs out. You wanna know
the fucking truth? Go find it.One day you will meet a girl who talks
about the world like she’s lived a thousand lives and still has the
wonder of a child, you will realize she’s the type to fight until
she’s bleeding underneath her fingernails as she clings to jagged
rocks if it means casting light and raising her voice for those
without one, she will bring a passion you’ve never seen and a
feeling you’ve never known, she will look at you with giant green
eyes that glow like planets in a big black void and you will feel your
heart catch in your throat, you will feel every inch of you tense up
and you will bite your tongue and you will want to run.Don’t you
fucking dare.Don’t turn your head and don’t even move a muscle,
stare at her even if she’s so bright it burns, reach for her even
though you’re terrified if you touch her the wrong way you’ll rip
a hole in her soul and she’ll bleed galaxies all over the both of
you, kiss her so hard you can feel the stars burning at the back of
her throat, trace the lines of her spine and memorize them like
craters on the moon you always swore you came fromyou’ve said before
you’re sure you’re an alien, now prove it.She makes you tremble
and that makes you mad, you hate to shake, you haven’t let yourself
feel vulnerable for seven earthly rotations around the sun, that’s
seven years, we get it, you’ve never been colder and you’re sure
most of you is dead but your heart is still heaving so don’t be
stupid, she’s standing right in front of you.You are brilliant and
you are intuitive and you are kinder than you’d like to admit but
you are not a hero for disappearing before you could destroy her,
you’re not doing anyone any favors by killing things before they can
be brought to life and insisting you don’t know how to love, if you
really believed she deserved the world you would reach inside yourself
and build what you could from the universe within you, if it turned
out it wasn’t enough you’d shake hands and move on with your
separate solar rotations but you won’t even try, you won’t even
open your eyes, and it begs the question, who do you think you are? Do
you really think you know what’s in the cardsbeforethe stars?If you
say you’re gonna ruin her then of course you will, self fulfilling
prophecies are terrible things and you know you’re the king of them,
but have you stopped to think that maybe she’s the queen? Have you
stopped to think that maybe she’s terrified too, she’s had to bolt
her feet to the fucking floor because she had the curve of your
jawline memorized the first time she touched it and it made her feel
sick, she’s been told all her life she’s a hand grenade and
she’s petrified you’ll pull the pin and be blown to bits, she’s
beside herself in a volatile fit imagining all the ways both your
hearts might break but she’s still in her spot in the milky way,
she’s still in place in front of pluto peeking out at you on the
moon, she was born from neptune and she’s bottomless and blue and
you can see yourself falling into her like an endless pit and it makes
you want to freeze and wither up because you’ve always saidyou’ll
diealone and you’ve lived like a diamond in the rough, until she
showed up shining like a sapphire and it’s alltoo much.But here is
the thing: nobody asked you to promise your life, nobody asked you to
patch up the holes in her soul, it’s not your job to make her whole
and nobody said you had to reconstruct the solar system, you’re not
a hero and you’re not a god and you’re certainly not the sun, but
you made sure it ended before it had even begun,you didn’thaveto
runbut it’s not too lateto come backto stayI know you don’t
exactly have a way with wordsthat you couldn’t possibly understand
the storm that washed the thoughts from my mind or the distraction of
worrying about my cheeksblushing when you lean in to whisperwhen there
is no one within earshot i can’t possibly express on paper that
feelingof taking a breath, of the moment in suspension right before
you lose your balance that burns within my stomachwhen I catch you
looking at me like that without warningthere are so many words in the
english language and no matter how many times I describethe warmth of
your fingers or the fluster of nothing on my lipsi cannot fathom us
into poetryi am a poet and you do not make sense to meI cannot
describe you as a blooming flower,unfurling to reveal the deepest
parts of yourselfbecause you would only laugh at thatI cannot describe
you in hyperbolesor words or metaphors and I am a poetso that makes me
want to scream my throat rawand rip apart the paper and words that
flood from my fingertips messilythat is the only way i can describe
usand somewhat feel satisfied in the way I always seek satisfactionin
words to write poetry about us is to writein a dead languageto write
poetry about us is the frustration in watching you expose the
bruiseson your jaw and cling onto your dignity while you whisper how
reckless you’ve been into my shoulderI cannot bandage your pride; I
cannot compose you into a sonnetI can write every delicate detail of
drowning in a golden clawed bathtub or sitting in sunlightwith flowers
woven behind my ears but the truth is that each image i conjure
isn’t simple enough because we are not an epic simileand your hands
are not actually fire burning at my cheeksthey are just handsI can
write about myselfI can condense myself into a neat placement of words
but youI cannot describe you even if I spoke inhieroglyphics or
braille I was once told that despite how beautiful, language is flawed
And I did not believe that one bitUntil you looked at me with an
expression That I could not find a metaphor for you are strictly
tangible, only flesh and crooked front teeth and that is why my heart
will soon fracturefor I can either write us onto paper or I can
silently love you
