He called me a star
But how can that be true?
My light is only there when I'm next to you

My dad calls my mom the moon
It's supposed to be romantic but to me he's a fool
The moon is a piece of rock
My mom is the whole world

He hold my hands
And tells me I'm the sun
I don't believe him
But it is true love

Once I was a caterpillar,
Curious but often naive,
Observing from the ground,
Waiting for my time to leave.

Then I was a luna moth,
Silhouette whispering to the moon,
Drawn to the heat and fleeting warmth,
Of men who did what they wanted to do.

When I was a black widow,
A man eater they'd say,
I lived recklessly in my villian era,
Until my empathy got in the way.

I think I'll try again as a hermit,
Not very brave but tired of bleeding,
I traverse through this sand,
Longing for a shell that won't demand meaning.

Would it be enough,
If the wind between us was but a breath apart
And I could smell your perfume as clear as
An ocean breeze upon a private beach?

Could you feel content
If our tender hungry lips
Finally collided like warring ships
Tongues twisting like Kraken tendrils
A war on two fronts until it hit a crescendo —
Of panted breaths and red heated flesh
Left feeling needy?

I am restless with intent
Intended to undress your tension
In kneading palms against knots that know not —
The ways I work magic in sculpting fingers.

So sh, silence those eyes
And lower that protesting volume
I know it’s been a while,
But I will love you like a fairytale
And you can tell me what you want in the ever after.

I hate pools, oceans, lakes, rivers.
I hate the feeling of the current against my body.
The fight to stay in one spot when the water wants me to go with it.

I hate how it whispers let go,
Like surrender is serenity
As if I haven’t fought too long to be here,
On my own terms

The chill that wraps around my limbs
Not gentle, not kind
But insistent —
Pulling me into depths I never chose

I hate the weightlessness,
Not the freedom, but the absence of ground,
The loss of edges,
Of lines I can hold onto

And I remember the diving board —
Toes curled over the edge,
The sky too big
The drop too deep

The water below dares me to jump,
Like it knows I don’t belong in the air,
Like it can’t wait
To swallow me whole.

I hate the silence before the splash,
That breathless second of doubt,
When the world holds still
And I almost believe I can be free,
Free to fall.

But I never am.
I step back.
The plunge is not worth the drowning.

In water, I am always unrooted,
Always drifting,
Always one breath away
From vanishing

~
It should be stark
and unprovoked,
yet fight to conceal.

It should justify
its intrusion
by layering
new narratives:
each a wonderland,
each a poison.

It should spring
like a cat,
cloud like doubt,
evaporate like
cigarettes at dawn.

It should backlight
truth, fictionalize
history.

It should undo
reality, drift into abyss
with the Lady of Shalott.

It should lead
the march into the sea,
it should die gracefully.
~