Sour scented citrus,
Sweet, slimy syrup.
That’s me!
Sour lemon,
Sweet honey.

My heart burns and
Emotions rise up
In acidic scent,
Sticky, icky, stingy
Sour lemon sweet honey.

The love stings and sits on cuts.
While honey glazes and gives warm hugs
As it finds a cure in the blood
Wherever it may be
With the right combination of:
Sour lemon and sweet honey.

Without a cup of tea with lemon I
Wouldn’t even dare in conscious fair to try
To roam throughout the day and Be
a very gay and pleasant company
Without fragrance this and hue or shade
Of lemon cake located on the plate

i.
To catch a boy in the wake of summer
Leave out a cup
Brimming with melon-colored milk tea and tapioca
Make sure to capture his smile
When he spills some on the counter

When it is still warm on the cheeks
And independence has yet to be fully realized
You catch a boy by offering him the futon
Night after night after night after night
You don’t think to ask your mom and
He doesn’t seem to mind the basement stench
But you overcompensate with your words anyway
You’re good at that

Kesha plays like a hymn in the cathedral
Of his boyfriend’s second car
But you catch a boy with the menthol sound
Of Cavetown at dusk in your hole of a bedroom
And he sits on the bed and watches you paint
As his notifications are piling up with passive-aggressive texts
Summer tastes like lemon and cough drops

Oh
You call
I cry
You breathe while I lie
with another.
You see while I eye
their skin.
who do you gaze
upon
lovingly?

you must notice
The way that I lean
to you.
The way that I try
to speak;
it’s but a conversation.
does it pain you so
To inhale
      my air?
its tree of smoke.
lively nights swallowed
like lemons.

you disregard my hellos.
how to say goodbye?

Last night I noticed that I'm dropping things
far too often.
Papers. Keys. Small plastic toys.
Even round lemons.
So far nothing fragile or important but still
this worries me.
I'm thirty-seven: not young anymore
but, also, I'm not old.
My first thought was: am I forgetting to hold them tight?
Perhaps, I'm not grabbing them right.
I sat for a while diagnosing my own mental health.
No. I am not becoming forgetful.
I can reason fine.
Relieved, I put my worries behind me
and went to sleep.

Darkness hurts my hands.
When I close my eyes
the pain starts.
It shoves itself like a clattering elevator
clawing its way up to my fingertips.
Poundings and tensions and strains
begin to disrupt my languid limbs.
In my dream, my palms feel like lead:
infinitely heavier than their normal weight.
My fingers start curling in.
But it's in my joints where the throbbing emanates.
The discomfort becomes insufferable.
It hurts to move my hands.
My fists have turned into numb bricks.
By now the pain has disrupted my sleep.
I take my sore hands and place them on top of me
as I turn my back and face the bed
letting my hands soak the heat guarded between
the sheets and my chest.
This alleviates some of the pain.
This is how I hope to get some rest.

Though I'm fully aware
that the pain in my hands
will never really go away.

i'm dreaming
of wildflowers
fluffy clouds
across the sky
finally feeling at peace
and lemon cheesecake.

I see him every single day. The longing inside of me aches for his acknowledgement. His knowing of my existence.But truly I should hate him. He is a monster after all.  I hide in the shadows of halls and argue with myself. There are people at my school who cannot let others joy pass through their sights. It’s as if their desire is to make everyone else weak so therefore they can maintain their power. But what is power that is taken from negativity? I will never know so therefore I will never speak up. I can’t speak up. No one will ever hear me or see me. No one even notices me unless I fall and cry or break when the teacher calls on me. I’m their daily amusement. My hands are always clenched in agony and my heart is always being ripped into shreds from vain conquests. Despite the tear in my throat my heart beats for the ailing souls of the forgotten. It knows what the others don’t see and hear. Despite my agonizing breathes of air I’m still alive today. How I can still walk with my breaking bones and how I can still see through the foggy lenses society has bestowed upon me is truly beyond me.

I cannot allow myself to speak. Speaking takes energy. I don’t have enough energy to simply express my being and then have my voice heard. My voice is quiet and raspy with edges of cut mirrors and thorny rose bushes. I used to be a lemon tree sweet and sour but golden and sunny as most people expected from me and came to realize and to be simply put that was their recognition. But then the hazy storms of dread pricked my fragile fingers and brought forth blood of ruins. I was ruined. But at first they didn’t care. They wanted to see me for the way they knew me and not the way I had became. How was it fair that she got the recognition from her ex and not I? Not everyone knows of my full story simply because of the sacred secrecy I have been cursed with. He has banished all thoughts of fantasy and left me as a beggar for mercy.