CRUSH

Today I’m not crushing on you. Handfuls of blue sky
spill out of my pockets and I let them, leaving a trail
of my thoughts about you like bread
for the birds, though I can’t decide
if this poem is a fairy tale. Of course I want to be
a goddamn princess, a wreath of violets
braided like your fingers in my hair, wear a bodice
laced so tight it’ll bruise my ribs and make me look
even thinner than I am, but also I’d like to tear off this dress and go
crashing through the muddy field I’ve recently made of my life, to roll
in the shit-yard of my mistakes like the pig
that I am, because there’s got to be
something humbling about that, something to ground me, like crying
while looking at yourself in the mirror, or thinking
about your own funeral, the flowers and the songs, all the people
who loved you, their quiet
voices like shadows touching each other on the shoulder
with a tenderness so frail it could crumble any moment even
right here right now if I don’t stop thinking
about it. And now I’ve stopped not thinking
about you because I’d like to love you
with a tenderness like that. I want you to tremble
like a bright dying leaf between my fingers, how I could crush you
at any moment, like the glass between my teeth as I pick up
these pieces of you I’ve so carelessly dropped and try
to put the sky back together, climb on top of it, call your name.

THE SHAPE OF A HEART

I want to text you naked photos from the bathroom,
lick an ice-cream cone while making eyes at you,
be stupid and cute. And by stupid I mean stop thinking
about cemeteries and morgues, stop wondering
how quickly bones freeze in the winter, and what happens
to the marrow inside, if it dries up like old fruit or
just evaporates into nothing, like all these words
coming out of my mouth, I’ve got nothing
to say because I can’t stop thinking about the five kids
who just burned to death in Minneapolis
because of a space heater. Because God may
or may not exist. Because fire is hot and bodies melt
when they’re on fire. Because we
are inside our bodies and without
our bodies we are nothing. Soon I will be nothing.
I don’t have a television because it’s where the news
comes from, which is almost always bad,
one more white cross on the side of the road and
my nerves will sputter out completely, my organs
come tumbling down the street like
balloons from a birthday party gone wrong.
It’s winter and I love you and
you’ll die someday too, a fact that will never
not make me cry. It’s 2014 and
breathing is still painful, all that clean air
filling up my lungs, except the air’s not really clean,
and most people aren’t that smart,
and right now there are living rooms spilling over with blood,
and right now half the world is covered in light,
and right now there are machine guns
strapped to the chests of young boys,
and right now there are girls
being raped by those boys, those boys
raped by men who used to be those boys.
Fuck the circle of life. Wake me up when your heart
is the shape of a heart, when the bluebird
in your chest decides to be real,
takes a mouthful of dirt with its song.

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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