there’s the set of highlighters

funny how a set of highlighters have burrowed their way

into the section of her brain

labeled “relevant”

yet here are the highlighters

pink orange green

I remember the guilt I had as

A nine year old girl

When I kissed another girl

Just for fun.

I wouldn’t have

If she didn’t lead me on

Freckled

Blue eyes

Red-brown hair.

After the first time she kissed me

Barricading our creativity and emotion

they stand

As tall as our dreams

And as vague as our goals

The rain is immediate, and collects in every pore like blood clots. 

For this moment, coiled small, a child’s figure shaking sleep —

I move. Pulsing water smudges the dented car hood

three blocks down, and there is a caution to both of our actions.

She’s not sure what to make of herself

stranger at home 

unfamiliar face in a sea of faces that

should be everything she’s looking for

Our love was born out of infinity,

Full of promises and late-night murmurings.

We chased each other around and around the loops of our symbol,

Never ceasing to catch our breath,

Never stopping to let our minds catch up with our words.

If loving yourself is a drug, then I am slowly becoming an addict

A habit like this isn’t hard to fall into,

I didn’t even have to try

It just felt so good,

I didn’t want to stop

High on pure admiration

There is absent space in my chest where pain used to be 

And the muscle memory has not yet learned to let go

Love everlasting

Love is only lasting

When you put yourself last

Kinder a love within lantern light flames and

Let the wax drip to seal the cracks of your previously broken heart

Redeem your wrinkled hands and

I feel like a shattered stained glass window.

On November 8th, 2016

(“a date which will live in infamy”)

I sat like a child on my bed

I had always thought myself an artist,

So I took a pen and drew a map — 

Every line

Of every state

I drew my home

snap the barrel of a boy fully loaded with good intentions 

and shoot yourself.

break your own heart,

into jigsaw puzzle pieces 

so you can practice the art of putting yourself back together.

Slut.

A word so keen and so sharp,

Thrown at me but never to me

To be muttered under the breaths of the boys who I’ve denied

And whispered from the girls with whom I have never exchanged a word.

Start small

the changes we swore to in

resplendent troths, without vision because

I burst forth from childhood

flat chested frail wristed pinions

not yet grown: all down

and yielding. So told do not fly

compress

We look at a distant light 

With hope for self discovery 

fear of catastrophe, 

and self-inflicted wounds 

We dig through the mountain

in order to escape 

Eclipsing, 

suffocating our souls

When I rewind the tangled film of that year to replay again,

the transcript hitches, a tainted roll of chromatography paper,

taken out from the closet a few too many times;

when I carefully crop it to the segment in question,

I was born at the wrong place

At the wrong time

Both my parents seeking a better life

For my sister and I

To find comfort across the border

Where movie stars and country folk

Looked deceivingly happy

Why do they keep praying

If nothing has changed

Hi my name is Ayiana

Once upon a time,

I was a young girl

Seeing the world through rose colored glasses

my mother sobbed to herself at the kitchen table

Wondering why

Crying tears that would not relinquish 

Madeline.

The first name I was ever given

A symbol of my mother’s overbearing need to go her way or no way

Her way had no meaning

It was simply a name she thought was pretty

It’s hard to understand what

to feel when his words say

he loves me but the tone of

his voice says the only thing

he cares about is himself.

Scars stain his back

and my wrists

but the only real scars are

As our war rages on, I’m caught in a crossfire.

One side shrieks its anthem of misguided hope.

The other, facing reality’s certain dread head on.

While I, a teenager caught in the midst of battle, seek refuge.

I was sitting in my private school, around age 8

The religion teacher said, everyone sit in a circle

Don’t speak

Close your eyes

Raise your hand when you hear God speaking to you

One by one each child raised their hand

I sat

heavy named girl, 

Your value is that of the anchor tied to your feet, the depth of your mother’s tongue when she looked upon you,

saw your grandmother’s eyes in your soft brown face and

A big city.

Different people,

Modern architecture,

A whole world to explore.

I have so many secrets to tell you through soft poems and open mouthed kisses on rosy flushed cheeks of best friends turned lovers and onto mothers and peaches bought from roadside shacks on small town access roads; toothy grins slyly hanging onto our faces —  

I sit 

in a green plastic booth

Sandwiched between a purple table 

and a streaky orange wall

I keep my fingers squished into my ears 

while I watch a librarian chase a girl my age around 

The way they teach poetry in schools

Is not the only way it can be written

               Structured stanzas

             and 

  parallel pantoums

mango juice drips from my fingers seeps into the brown dirt dirt that holds roots that reach across countries roots that stitch together centuries roots that spread and cannot be confined mango juice drips from my fingers plunges to the earth earth my mother raced across earth that felt the weigh

(A palindrome poem meant to be read top to bottom,and then bottom to top)