TIMELINE

1. I was a whimsical child always, Guessing the music of another’s ear,
Janet Jackson daze, the child’s white
dress on the bed, closet hiding, nodding yes, Kids on salvia watching fur coats dance.

2. Propped on my mothers pool table, new low laughing precipitation,
Blowing bubble gum into cloudy skies, Flicking a dimmer switch.

Running for god, for more mirages, to be an audacious Cadillac, brazen-faced ephemeral girl in a dark room, always in transit

3. Looking glass self bitter,
gardens cannot exist on this lagoon.
Reflections of me, of not me, of moss floating,
and your hair on my face while you watched me sleep.

4. I was taught to smell empathy on strangers. To seek out friends washing hands in airport bathroom stalls, but now, I prevented from talking, I coax another lozenge down my throat.

5. Like laying bricks with honey instead of mortar—I will keep toppling, seeping, decaying
like baby teeth sitting in your mom’s dresser drawer.
I am the words that you cannot remember,
But sit in your subconscious like your childhood home. I am the asphalt’s thirst, the first rain on a highway overpass, after a summer of cracking cement skin.