Shortcake

An anthology which first tells a story about withdrawal from life, then explores patterns lyrically, and ends with an ode to interconnection and sisterhood.

Did the person who told me “Yeah you’d be nothing but a strawberry if I didn’t find you,” not know that he was one of the first people I met who saw me as candy rather than a person? 

Did he not know he was there, at the beginning, before my story started getting reckless and wrought with disdain?

I will remember the conversations I had with kind grocers, I even insist

There are no mountains of memories to enshroud them yet

And I will remember the moment

I was added to someone else’s list

for letting the good ol “hot girl s**t” get to my head

cause god forbid I wake up and make the bed

hail mother mary if I brush my teeth, nothing deters my imaginary predators, 

in a day, maybe by the next moment-

I’ll wish they were my friends all over again

cross my heart and hope to die for being born this day

for opening all my doors

for them, sometimes I realize I can’t see their faces clearly

as if there are that many seats at my maggot clogged paint stained table

eerie pop dripping from the chrome slab

the fruit flies I cultivated slipping out before vanishing again into their hives, their homes, and I am no excavator, no landlord, nor evictor 

well, why would you stay?

when it’s polished I’m ill with antics

and by then you’ll have another diagnosis until you realize you are in the company

of an ensemble

and I’d never send my good friends home

especially if you fell in love with one

I am as well trained of a composer as I was when I tried it once, and since lost my coordination

I write music as well as I did when I was a first-chair cellist in middle school 

but I still remember feeling light

when I had students who gave into obsession 

and started splashing dots to play on blank sheet paper

like I used to

but I don’t regret falling off the straight and narrow anymore

God will put me in the worm bin if I need to be fed off so that the colony grows

nothing else to add to that

She deserves more lines

I think that I can dream of streaming over rocks below 

Hoping nothing weathers down

To be less than stone and brown 

and verdant but accordingly 

Nadia, my godsister, was never very green

She’s where the roots lay

I think that I can dream of

streaming down well known sled spots

Instead of being in the snowfall this year

I rocked the horse in the same old room

Nadia was never very green

She’s the color a horse’s fur is

None of them are born green 

I think that I can dream of making things up again

Exhale, in my closet 

When will I remember what came first

I can dream of streams explaining to me better through all the lips the thin the dark from New England from Kentucky Europe Latin America from the dirt to the shore to places I never saw before and if that flower who called men bees is freer than I’ll ever be because her brother wants gold then I’ll remind the voices once again that cobblestone had its place and we need hay to obscure needles it might just be working out as intended, feel free to ignore the fact I never know which screws are loose while I’m writing and ‘take it with a grain of salt’

Otherwise I don’t mind the sound of me expiring because if it didn’t land on ears it landed in the soil

And eventually we’ll have another layer of deposits

and another layer 

and another

and if I was just a pebble, alright, not everyone can be an igneous rock 

nobody gets to choose in a world made of fire

I made my choices while being something like an oyster out of a pearl, like everyone else

I made my bed

and I’ll wake up tomorrow morning to see how I feel

just like my sister