Gossamer
Intimacy lingered on our lips like the glass of wine that danced on my fingertips
as I waited to take a sip in between the breaths of bellyaching laughs that blew from my chest.
Sometimes heartbreak comes from those who healed you; we shared
something unspoken, yet written one million different ways.
Fixing what we did not break by not leaving instead of asking each other to stay.
You had me at your fingertips like our 10-dollar-bottle of cabernet,
that with the chill of autumn’s uncertainty, my summer slipped away.
An ode to my future daughter when looking for love.
I want you to look in the mirror and breathe in every last bit of you;
nurturing the half of me in you that created you, held you, raised you.
I want the painted art of, on, and inside your skeletal cage and mind
to remain indestructible; confident, powerful, strong, one of a kind.
When thinking of me, I hope you think of your soul and what you love most
and I hope blood courses through you like a river rushing to the coast.
I longed for the love that threaded together the other half of you,
I wrote until my hands bled, ripped out the pages, then scurried for glue.
I hope that you pray for someone like your father, I know I prayed for mine,
I took careful notes from my mother and bolded them in red underline.
I pray you take the time to feel free, but are as diligent as I learned to be,
I pray that the love that finds you gives you both freedom and security.
You don’t yet exist and neither does the love that will bring you,
I love me enough for all of us, I’ll ensure your other half will too.
My Red Flag
“Your apartment feels like a honey-cinnamon latte,” he said.
I bit my lip, pointed at the coffee cart, and smiled: “That’s kind of my thing.”
He laughed, said he’d be expecting one someday.
The truth? I wasn’t really talking about lattes—though I do drink one every morning.
I was talking about me. About the way I love, the way I nest.
About how badly I wanted him to see it.
I wasn’t hinting at sweetness. I was spelling it out: I’m wifey material.
His one-track mind drifted to lattes and lustful mornings.
Mine was blending coffee into a love story.
Newsflash: he wasn’t the one. I didn't ask him to say that he loved me, but feels chained by commitment.
I draw men in with ease, with comfortability, with the smallest rituals turned into love stories.
And still, they run from warmth, as if a honeyed latte were a danger.
My red flag? I’m chronically romantic.
Entrepreneurship
A thousand ideas thrown at the wall,
hope tails behind each one of ‘em.
“I need something to believe in,”
I gasp in a pleading hymn.
Bachelorettes
Laughter echoes above the Taylor Swift playlist that’s bouncing off the cabinets of our air BnB kitchen. Just like the decaying melancholy tune of piano keys, we come to a steady silence. We are hungover, happy and healing with every slipping second of the weekend. Our friend, our sister, our favorite local yoga instructor, offers a class to the four of us standing there in the back living room. I politely decline while my friends jump on the opportunity to be intuitive in the way they move their body - “I’ll cook us breakfast in the meantime,” I insist. The manifestation of fitting into one size smaller bridesmaid dress fits in the hand of a well-nurtured and well-fueled body. I got my workout in earlier that morning. I take my sweet time, attentively chopping each ingredient, pouring in a heavy hand of love and my secret ingredient, adobo, to the scrambled egg mixture. I smile at my one friends giddy attitude on the phone in the other room, and laugh to myself when I realize she’s talking to her dog, and laugh again when she reminds her partner to feed him. I cut the bagels and plate them for convenience, I pull out the veggie and fruit trays for options, I pop the champagne for continued celebrations. I feel the same eternal peace I see radiating from my friend basking her face masked cheeks in the sun while soaking in the hot tub on the porch outside the kitchen window. I turn on the stovetop to start the process of cooking so that with perfect timing the food will be hot and ready for a morning feast. A warm hand grabs my shoulder and shows appreciation for my hard work. “How was yoga?” I ask. “Incredible, you should have joined. Let us cook.”
I sit on the barstools accompanying the breakfast nook and admire the way my friends work in harmony side by side. I don’t know when, but the music changed - something to carry our developing, heightened mood into the beginning of our day. There’s something to be said about the love language that speaks to female friendships; but I’ll leave it at this: a man would be lucky to marry any bachelorette on this trip.
Stained Glass
“You’re staring right through me,”
“So are you…”
“I know I can’t stop.”
What are we?
It’s like I left the faucet running and you shut it off seconds before it overflowed.
You cupped your hands on my head, sipping the water so it didn’t spill,
“it’s going to be great once you get there, it’s New York,”
you seemed so sure. I believed it, like most things you say,
but I can’t help but wonder why your cheeks weren’t rain soaked.
Down with the Ship
All the words that mean something to me sound like they’re bursting out of your lungs as you propel out of frigid waters gasping for air. Out comes secrets kept like a treasure buried deep in your chest so just as the sinking feeling sits, the ship doesn’t sink… and I’m pulled back in by your tide.
Boy Next Door
Elevator ding: you stand there, delivered
by the pulleys of an invisible string.
Foreigners finger swiped separated by floorboards
in a fantasy land
of reversed floor plans.
You shared your sugar like a good neighbor should
then savored my sweetness like I craved you would.
Is it genuine, or is it every mans’ dream I’m living in?
Speaking in Tongues
You call me again, guess you're out of your head,
It’s 2pm and you’re just leaving bed,
I ask, “Have you seen the sun this week?”
I have no shame in forcing you to show your teeth.
What do I have to lose,
except the lore of me and you?
innocent love
I want the type of love that is innocent; I’m cooking with you, sous chef, in the kitchen. There’s distant sitcom laughter undermined by our own, we sit comfortably in the house we made a home. I’m dancing for you naked in the refrigerator light, you pull me closer in the middle of the night. Our fingers intertwined like puzzle pieces fitting together, falling in love like late September weather. Forehead kisses that taste sweeter than honey, exchanging smiles that can’t be bought with money. Thinking of each other in our 5 year plan, then running towards that picture hand in hand. The kind of love where we lose sleep pouring our hearts out over a cyph and miss out on dreaming because it doesn’t compare to real life.
Tea’s Gone Cold
I was the spoon full of honey giving my sweetness to your earthy black tea that was nothing without sugar cube kisses from me.
I was trapped inside the ceramic stone walls of a pottery barn mug cupped by your frostbitten fingers; no wonder you treated me so cold.
The rain is gone
feeling like my messages left in blue
my green eyes teared up just for you
yellow sunshine came to clear my head
purple hearts next to your name because you’re dead
red blood dripping from the scars you reopened
gray clouds over my head to ache my coping
with the black days you left in front of me
confused chose why you chose white lies over honesty
Coward
Consumed in the fire you burnt on my name,
you pay repercussions for driving me insane.
I look back wondering when did things change,
I sip my tea, stirring in the honey and pain.
I guess to you my heart was just a game,
now you trip over your laces when you hear my name.
I’m pending upon an apology,
sit and think about what you’ve done to me.
You mouth the words “do not resuscitate,”
there’s no saving you, no restoring our fate.
I see you crumble to pieces in front of me, broken from things I tried to fix, sadly
Fuck, why did I want you so badly?
I opened my heart to make it your home,
now it’s 2am and I walked home alone.
A part of you wanted me to leave,
another part cried please don’t,
I kept my peace, you kept your apology,
to each their own.
Some things never change
I stood on my tippy toes reaching for the handle of the green door that was the armoire of the figments that were reality. Inside my sisters and mom are setting the table and my dad catches the door behind me balancing a pizza from our spot. It seems like just yesterday the evergreens on the front lawn shaded the cloudy days and that same tree was a castle. The sun shone through the music of my mother, and reflected on me and my sisters in marvelous ways. We all still sing under the same sun and maybe that’s why the evergreen was painted yellow and home is still behind that door.
A hopeless place
We met dancing under color changing lights
You saw me from across the room - it was a Friday night.
You locked your eyes with mine and holy shit I was mesmerized.
It’s like we spoke a secret language, morse code with our eyes
except I didn’t blink once,
I melted into those big brown eyes and I felt you stare back in my green;
I felt you like I felt the grass on my feet on the first spring day where the sun is still shining at 6 o'clock and I just go out of work and I’m trying so deeply to feel something -to feel the sun once again on my skin,
to feel loved.
Maybe I was looking for someone to be looking for me, maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I was just dancing.
Who hurt her?
You tied the noose with every lie,
I wore a little black dress to the gallows
where you hung me up to dry.
Montagues and Capulets
Rhythm and poetry, News York Times,
I memorized every line in my head.
Divided by city lines and white collar crimes,
we will never understand each others’ every thread.
Tree-lined streets, heels crunching leaves,
Nikes on pavement, white tee, no sleeves.
Busy map of buses, subways and cars,
Only a few miles, yet so far.
