Love is a violent thing
It cracks you open and lets your insides spill
Out, sidelining
Your name,
Your face,
Your will to pull yourself together
Filling spaces that had only dust before
The world doesn’t hold back, it
Winds up and kicks you in the teeth
Pulls you up by your hair and screams in your face
I learned it early
That you can’t love without breaking something

Zeros are damned hard to draw
When you hold the pencil in the wrong hand
They don’t call the left hand right for a reason, but
They never told me why
My teacher broke it in half
(The pencil, not the hand)
And gave me the side without the eraser
I cried
There were so many zeros to draw
So many fears to wipe away
That blurred the crooked lines

In Bayside,
The duplex that kept the rain off seven backs
Was too small for even just me and my ego
I had to be trained to make myself small
With a leather belt across my palm,
My thigh,
My face
I was like a wild horse
Bucking like a California quake
Throwing cowboys off my back
Thinking that this must be what a revolution looks like
This must be what a revolution feels like

It was grass and rain and our limbs
All tangled up together
I was like a mute, my quiet muffled the sound
So he couldn’t hear, couldn’t stop to listen to the
Sounds of my hands whisper, “I love you, I love you, I love
You.”
We broke down the tent we made, woven
Deep with all the colors of the sky
Broke down the shade that kept harsh rays
From blinding us painfully
We broke painfully, or maybe
It was all gone a long time ago

His back hit the lockers so hard
That my teeth rattled
And my hairs rose like the voices that stood still
Not touching him, not touching me
Boy I didn’t know—girl I didn’t know—boy who was all the things I ever knew
My left hand yanked me across the hall
And grabbed the arm that shoved
My eyes found eyes that dripped with blame
Mine said,
I learned how to forget my skin
For stinging me when someone got mad so
Take your best shot
Hit me
I already know how to laugh