When you’re five

You’re asked “What do you want to be

When you grow up?”

And I wondered

Why can’t I be

Who I already am?

Maybe, I’m not the line leader

Maybe, I don’t always get picked

First for dodgeball

Or anything

Maybe, I get picked last

More often then not

Maybe, I get called 

Some names

But they’re not so bad

Maybe ugly

And slow seemed 

Typical

And when the boy

With the dirty blond hair

And the blue polo shirt

Called me 

“Burnt Toast 

In a bag of white bread”

The teacher said

To my dad

“He’s just five

He doesn’t know”

But he knew

How to hate

And maybe, I was

The wrong colored

Crayon in a box

Full of perfect

Maybe I wanted to be

Someone else

When I grew up

And they told me 

To dream

And even those 

Weren’t quite right

Krysten Brannick said

“I want to be a vet”

And Katlyn Catigan

Wanted to drive taxis

My teacher smiled 

And I said-

Even my dreams 

Got called names

Silly

Dumb

“Do something

Practical”

When I was eight

I told my substitute teacher

“Fuck off”

He said 

I should be locked 

In a cage

Little did he know

My skin was enough

I didn’t have the key

To unlock

A white face

When I was 12 

I got detention

For bullying

When I was 13

I bit

A girl in my class

I got written up

When I bit her

Again

I got suspended

I cut this girls hair

Clear off her head

Took her ponytail

Phewf

Dropped to the floor

Blonde

Day after

Wretched after day

I used my sharp tongue

To cut 

Confidence

I could slice you

With my words

My mind

Trained 

To be quicker 

Than yours

You can’t 

Out-dress me

You can’t 

Call me names

If you’re 

Too busy hoping

I don’t call you one

First

Belonging

To a race 

Of freaks

To a tribe

Of misfits

Unfit for friend-

Ship

Sailing on a sea of

Oxycoton and cocain

Swimming in aderol

To drown the urge to be-

Longing for a place

Where fitting in

Is to just be-

Longing for the cure

That I always had

When they asked me

What I wanted to be

When I grew up

I said

“An artist

That’s where I belong”

I looked around and thought “there’s nothing here for me.”

So where was it? Where is it? Where’s the thing?

When you realize you’re not the one it’s galactic, or outer-spacial, or cosmically tragic. It’s a star burning too bright, combusting from the inside out—charred, chunked, jagged hunks of it self being spat into the universe, turning to depraved astroids, smoking boulders called Disappointment and Sex and Shattered and You-Should-Have-Known-Better. My heart’s like that. Consumed by fire, licked by flames called Why-Not-Me-When-I-Love-You-So-Much. I’m breaking up inside, like the sun crashing down on the planet, so my heart crushes the spirits of my body’s solar system, orbiting thoughts surrounding You. 

I’m sort of like a half eaten apple. Not even half eaten. Picked at. Someone stuck their thumb nail and popped my shiny flesh and dug out a little bit of my insides. I was dropped on the concrete and bounced a few times and got these soft, vulnerable patches barely protected by this thin outer peal that wasn’t really so shiny anymore, it was kind of dingy and matted down. I got kicked behind a desk and I stayed there and got soft and concentrated and started changing into something I wasn’t before. I’m just this beat up, disgusting thing that no one really wants but everyone used to want and it doesn’t really matter what I was cause what I am is what I am and you don’t want to take a bite out of me.

Do you ever look at dark city windows and wonder where those people are? I do. I might see hundreds of squares of yellow light but all I can focus on are the dark spots. I like to make up stories in my head of where they are, what they’re doing. Maybe they went away to the country. Or upstate. Maybe they’re shopping in Saks. Maybe they’re buying new furniture, they’re newlyweds and they’re making their dream apartment. Or they’re having a baby and they left the City to raise her in Rhode Island and they’re coming back for all of their stuff as soon as they find the perfect, old, white house, with the wrap around porch and two swings outside the front door to sit on and drink lemonade in the summer. Or maybe it’s a studio apartment and a dancer lives there, and he’s always out working on Broadway and in Lincoln Center and he calls his parents from his cell phone and says things like “Sorry I’m in a rush, love you” and “I’ll call you after the show, miss you”. Or it’s not even an apartment it’s actually an office building and the CEO actually gave his employees a long weekend off to spend time with their families. Especially this one guy that works there and stays in Manhattan on the weeknights but goes back home to Pennsylvania on the weekends, and this weekend he gets to stay through Monday and see his daughter’s first school play, so it’s really special for him, and he’s so thankful he buys his boss a coffee mug. His boss tears up cause he never gets anything, you know. Or it’s possible it is a quaint one bedroom apartment and this one guy lives there but he met a girl in his class and she’s been staying with him, and they don’t even have sex, they just turn off all of the lights and they watch movies and he holds her hand up to his heart and kisses her fingers and sweet things like that, he doesn’t even touch her in anyway that makes her ears hot or her legs shake, and he looks into her eyes and says things like “You look beautiful” and he’s not talking about her face which is just a stupid face she didn’t even make or deserve or anything and people look at it and say she’s beautiful but they don’t mean it like he means it when he says it and doesn’t have sex with her. Maybe they’re in that window and they’re actually home, you know, it’s not even empty or anything. 

I left the light on in my kitchen when I left just now. I’m on the 8th floor so people can see me from kind of far but it’s not too high so it’s kind of an obvious window to look at. And I didn’t want it to be dark when I left. I didn’t want people imagining things about where I was. They’d look at the yellow square like all the rest and not think twice. Or maybe something like “Oh she’s doing her homework” or “She’s reading a book” something ordinary like that. I don’t want to be the star of anyone’s fantasies. So, I left the light on when I left. 

This is amazing.

DIY Galaxy Shorts

Being special sucks. I can assure you that if you are like everyone else, you are very lucky. When you’re special, it’s like you’re only special in-so-much-as you are special to yourself. I mean, you can see your promise and potential and innovation; you can hear the multifaceted, illuminating intonations of your brilliant mind humming a chorus of harmonic fantasia. You know you’re special when you close your eyes and you see things that no one in this world could have imagined. No one in this world could conjure up the images your idiosyncratic mind could. And you’re certain of the extreme disparity there is between you and mediocrity and your teachers and your parents see it and you see it and I guess the world sees it too. And it’s like a disability. It’s like worse then walking with a limp or being fat or being ugly because no one feels bad for you. They envy you and your weird mind. They tease you. And they hate you. And they spite you. And it’s a real deep down hate, darker and more primal then a child’s impulse to tease and taunt the weaker or smaller or dumber classmate, because they know that you are stronger and you know that you are stronger, so they don’t try to tear you down, break you, win, instead, they pick you apart, little by little, and it’s almost like you don’t even notice. Then one day you wake up thinking “Who am I and why am I so lonely and why is their a gaping hole at the base of my throat that makes me feel as if I can’t swallow and I’m being swallowed up at the same time.” No one ever hears stories about special people being sad and afraid. They are privileged, that’s what everyone says, they are happy, that’s what everyone thinks. I bet that’s what you think. No one feels bad for you because you’re beautiful and smart and talented. What am I talking about, right? I’m talking about my mind and my face and the fact that I wish I could have been average, mediocre, simple at best. I wish I was like everyone: vanilla, white bread, cookie cutter, Anglo-Saxon. And it’s not even about being brown instead of white. It’s the fact that when you’re “special” and unique and different like I am, only you think your special, alone, in the end. But when you’re just normal, then it’s easier to find someone normal, someone average, like you, and that person makes you feel special, sees you as special because they love you. What I’m saying is, when you’re born special like I was, and you don’t necessarily need anyone to make you special, then no one comes along, and no one loves you like you want to be loved. I guess I’m saying that there are worse things then being average. You could be special. You could be alone. Like I am.

Thanks!

DIY Galaxy Shoes

Thank you so much.

Thinning bands, lost elastic, snapping, snapping, threatening back. Fragile, fragile, notwithstanding ties I’ve made, translucent thread with bits of indigo woven in. This spiderweb of string, connecting me to other beating hearts with thicker, crimson blood, with cobalt tinges and broad sapphire veins. Stronger people, with selfishness embedded in their tissue. And I am connected to them, but only with feeble, fragile, tiny, thin translucent ties. Barely there, barely noticed, barely me, barely baring my barely soul, barely, barely mattering to barely, hardly anyone.