screaming letters warn

cautioning, threatening

but I lean in

revel in the reveal 

most don’t like spoilers

but I live for them

I see the pieces on the ground,

So broken, scattered, torn.

The pieces long forgotten,

Continents and oceans overworn.

prometheus — light crammed between his jaws

licking up the insides of his teeth

scratching enamels in their

his climb — ran triumphant

meek made resplendent tossing

the ember from his mouth and

I self-reflect

And I gaze deep

To try to forget the secrets that I keep

I bind myself

And hide my chest

All day long until I rest

I stay at home

And lay in bed

Trying to drown out what you said

Sometimes I go through days where I will buy a whole bag of fortune cookies from the Panda Express drive-thru 

and eat them all in one sitting, just so that someone can tell me something good. 

If I were to pluck my feathers,

I wouldn’t be able to fly.

But I want to feel the grass underneath my feet

I hop like a robin on the sidewalk

(away from flight, towards dandelions

sprouting in cracked concrete)

The moment I was conceived

And my egg was fertilized to have xx chromosomes

Instead of xy

My body was taken away from me

And placed in the hands of men

The hands of men that control dress codes

        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