Lord of the Butterflies

I suffer from unrequited self love. I love myself, but I don’t Love myself back.

When all the good in you starts arguing with all the bad in you about who you really are, never let the bad in you make the better case.

Come, love, make me better than I was. Come teach me a kinder way to say my own name

Of all the violence I have known in my life I have never known violence like the violence I have spoken to myself,

I think the hardest people in the world to forgive are the people we once were, the people we are trying desperately to not stir into the recipe of who we are now.

It isn't that you don't like boys. It's that you only like boys you want to be

So at 12:31pm, when he decided not to- when he came down, when the road opened- I did, too, my whole world, my whole mind went home with living proof of what I'd only before known in theory: that we are truly not alone in this, that our veins are absolutely strings tied to other people's kites, that our lives are connected. That my butterflies are never gone, they're just flying around in someone else's belly sometimes'.

There will be music for you one day.

Do you know science just proved an atom can exist in two places at the same time? No one is ever only at the scene of their crimes. Each of us is always also somewhere holy.

Come tender as the trees forgiving the books for asking to be made.

I feel that sometimes when I’m writing poems—like they don’t yet fit. Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?

you don't lose a person like a set of keys because you don't find them again and you can still get to where you're going.

The heartbeat is actually the sound made by the heart valves closing. If you, my love, ever hold a stethoscope to my chest, I will tell you to listen for the silence in between. What is and what will always be yours is the sound of my heart finally opening.

There are few weapons more dangerous than our wounds, and, being wounded, there are things we all do that we would often rather die than face. But no one heals what they refuse to look at. So when asked if I think you’re a good person, I say, I don’t believe in good people. I believe in people who are committed to knowing their own wounds intimately.

I hear almost every argument is a race for the victim spot.

Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?

It’s true what they say about the gays being so fashionable— our ghosts never go out of style, even life is like funeral practice: half of us already dead to our families before we die, half of us still on our knees trying to crawl into the family photo.

Mary Levine calls you a dyke and you don't have the words to tell her she's wrong and right. You just show up to her house promising to paint your fingernails red with what will gush from her busted face if she ever says it again.

Come love, make me better than I was. Come teach me a kinder way to say my own name.

I know you take issue with me comparing Trump to Hitler. One, a failed painter who blamed the Jewish people for the beauty his heart was too ugly to make. The other, a con artist with enough failed humanity to eye our dying planet and focus on Miss America’s weight.

I say, I don’t believe in good people. I believe in people who are committed to knowing their own wounds intimately.

Almost always they answer god or booze. One I don’t tolerate. The other, I’m told, doesn’t tolerate me.

My mother used to knit my mittens too big so they’d still fit me when I grew. I wore them and looked like who I wasn’t yet. I feel that sometimes when I’m writing poems—like they don’t yet fit. Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?

When they told me god was always watching I said, Who wants to worship a diary thief? I didn’t dare say who wants to worship anyone

White Feminism (noun): 1. A racism that claims it is at least better than no feminism at all, like at least Hitler was a vegetarian, like we could actually get comfortable being the uneaten animal in the lap of a man making lampshades out of human skin.

My "yes" never fit into the "no" of this world.

The closest I might ever come to war is the turning of my head. Apathy is intimate, like singing a lullaby to a grenade, then drinking yourself to sleep while it sneaks out the window to explode a boy.

Maybe it's coming out of the closet with all of it, knowing even when the truth isn't hopeful the telling of it is.