I stole your hands the first time I touched them,
gripped your fingers in mine and refused to let
loose.
You couldn’t even be mine then.
Your eyes were still learning the roundness of my
face and
you were a visionary, a vision, and I was looking for
something to put my faith in. You showed me miracles
in fields of sunflowers in the middle of a sun-
scorched desert,
and I wished to burn myself until
I became the light that drew you. But you painted me
happiness, said you were looking for something to
reflect your light off of and I did;
I swallowed your rays
inside my gut and tried to reflect you into poetry.
Nothing I wrote was ever right.
No combination of twenty-six letters could ever form
something that could adequately contain your magic so I
transformed myself, turned my pens into violin strings
and moaned every time you played me,
back arched and strung over your shoulder.
We were symphonies.
We were orchestras.
Our nails in each other’s skins like music and
we became it, notes rising and falling into our ears
like melodies played in secret.
You sang me through my darkest hours, love.
Reached out and lit all my abandoned corners,
ignited flame from the ash that
swooped inside my halls.
I was the light that drew you, lover.
And you are painting me still,
joy and tenderness
your colors of choice.

Darling, I am writing to stop writing you.
I am hanging out all my pens to dry and burning all my
notebooks.
I surrender.
I surrender.
Every-day language was not tailored to fit all your
divinity, and I am a peasant,
a lowlife,
a barbarian kneeling at your feet,
and you are the Light that has driven all my ghosts
away.
And I surrender.
I surrender it all to you,
take my rhythm and rhyme
and meter and diction and
leave me only those hands
still gripped tightly between my fingers,
thumb steadying my heartbeat
and pulling me home.

I have drawn maps for you, dear.
Every mountain and valley painted
out; every swamp, lake, and desert
pinpointed. I’ve made calculations,
sketched with accuracy; back bent
for days on end.

Right here is where I began to love
you: throughout this river that ran
through the whole of me and back again.
I loved you into oceans and seas,
tsunami tides threatening to drown
whole cities of me. I was quickly
underwater for you. Lungs full and
breath discarded; given up. I had
never known my forest heart to burn
until you touched it, acres and acres
of trees ablaze.

And here I was, a post-apocalyptic
world of a person and you roam me,
victorious and solitarily, planting
your flags on every continent of me.

You have claimed me, lover. Every
speck of sand and droplet of water
was yours for the taking. And I have
exited myself and migrated into you;
every inch of your skin a home I have
dug my roots in.

I had drawn a map for you, darling,
I had mapped out all my landscapes.

Burn it;

my love for you like a thousand
recurring Big Bangs exploding, and
imploding, and erasing, and rewriting
all my pasts and presents. Apocalypse
after apocalypse, and only you survive
amongst my wreckage.

Here is where I exist: outside of me
and within the confines of your skin.

An immigrant rediscovering my motherland,
I pledge full allegiance to your heartbeat
and your smile and those hands that have
carried me home.

You wanted to be seen. I wanted to
be heard, so you pinned your right
ear to the right side of my left
breast and I filled my eyes with
the whole of you.

For the first three weeks we were
in love, you would yell “poet talk!”
giggling at every exaggerated sentiment
I’d used to romance you, but I could
tell from the way the corners of your
lips pushed away from one another that
you’d believed me.

You didn’t always believe me. There
were times when those same lips would
purse with disbelief when I would call
you beautiful, would feign
a smile only for the sake of showing
gratitude when I would tell you things like

“baby, I swear I had never understood
why people claimed to “fall” in love
until I kept tripping on my own two
feet every time you would flash that
heart wrenching smile at me”.

I swear, for every second you spend
believing you’re mediocre, I will
dedicate an hour of my life to
convincing you that you’re holy,
my lover;
because when you hold me,
every cell of my zealous body
screams out in prayer, breaks out in
shameless submission and reckless desire.

Would you believe me if I told you I had
never, ever aspired to belong to another
until the first time I laid eyes on you?

You, with your honey-dipped lips and hips
I would gladly lose every part of myself in;

you:

heart of gold and eyes like the sun come
up again;

my sun,
my sky,
my stars,
my moon, listen:

there are so few things that can change a
human heart, can alter its size and function,
can condition it to beat harder or faster
or softer or stronger, to beat at whatever
rate they see fit. I was never convinced
that love would fall under the category of
things that could accomplish this.

You’ve heard me say such ignorant things.

I think I said exactly this back when I was
trying to convince you I was a cold-hearted
cynic, that I didn’t believe love even existed,
that it was an
overvalued,
overrated,
pointless emotion I had no interest in,

think back to our very first conversation.

You said, “it hurts to fall in love with so
many things”.

I took that to heart.

I didn’t even know why back then.

But when you said, “it hurts to fall in love
with so many things”,

I took that to my heart.

And in sweet silence and unbound determination,
all the so many things inside of me lined up
for display,
and my harder, faster, softer heart and I,
we both agreed we would prove you wrong.

To everyone who has ever asked me to “man up”:

please,

take another fucking look at me.

I am all woman,
all double-x,
all lower-your-voice,
all cover-yourself,
all flash-a-smile,
be delicate,
all survival,
survival,
all surviving,
all fight.

In my conditioned silence all I had been
fighting
for years
is my own instinct.

Every feeling of inferiority planted underneath
my skin.

But I will no longer be victim to this.

I will no longer be subjected to the
sickening degradation of my sex.

I am more than this.

I am centuries of women being beaten up
and burnt at the stakes,
the silent screams held behind their
clenched teeth,
I am the black and blue circles on their
covered faces,
the reincarnation of every girl buried
before ever being able to breathe,

I am the woman I will teach my daughter to be
and I too, promise to not be silenced.

Will not have my gender dragged through the
mud in the name of their righteousness.

We know we are more than this.

But the men in my country have thrown us into open
graves.

Like their ancestors before them, they have
found it best to stifle our whimpers before
they grew into screams.

But I have been clawing my way out of dirt
for so long and I will not rest until I feel
the sun on my face again,

until I am standing on the same steady ground
that they parade on so full of feigned piety.

I am coming back for all the rights that were
dragged away from me.

Before you tell me to “man up”,

know that my womanhood has been stolen away
from me.

Has been turned into something
so perverse,
so wrung with evil,

I had spent years wishing I wasn’t so unholy,

but I’m taking it back.

I do not wish to be anything other than what
I am,

so believe me when I tell you that I will never
“man” up.

I will reclaim the force of my gender,

Realize the holiness of my existence,
rekindle the ashen fires of my passions.

I am a woman reclaiming the sacredness of the
disgraced term

“woman”.

So the next time you want to remind me of my strength,
tell me of our history. Of the women who have waged wars
against all this ignorance before me.

The next time you want to remind me of my strength,

don’t you dare tell me to “man up”.

Just remind me that:

I am all woman,
all double-x, all oestrogen,

I am a force to be reckoned with,
a movement within myself,

all woman,
all power,
all power,
all power.

1.

The first time you are shown our family tree,
know that you are not made of roots. Know
that you are not a tree trunk held in place
by the memory of your ancestors. And even if at
times you feel their anger coursing through your
blood, know that we all have monsters in the
knots of our chromosomes,

but you, darling, are not defined by the demons
in your DNA.

2.

The first time you awaken to blushing sheets,
know that there is a battle wound between your
legs that will not scar for decades to come
and every twenty-eight days, you will be reminded of
everything you lost in this war you did not wage,

but my darling, know that you will always be my
brave little warrior and that I pray that you
find your peace before the blood dries up.

3.

The first time your heart takes up a task other
than pumping blood, know that it is normal to
melt at the mention of someone’s name, that it is
okay to want to stitch your skin to the one you love,
that falling can sometimes build instead of break you,
and even if you end up in pieces,

my darling, know that breathing love out into the air,
however selfishly, is never something to be regretted.

4.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
looking for words that have not yet been invented,
know that you got that from your mother,

and child, the only monster under your skin that
you will never be able to fight is poetry.

5.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
longing for pieces of yourself you left in notebooks,
know that writing is all about shedding your skin until
you are see-through,

and darling, I know being transparent hurts, I know how
much it aches to rip your skin apart and stick your veins
on paper for the world to see,

I know it wears you out. But I got it from my mother, too,
and darling, know that I wouldn’t know how to rid
you of it either.

6.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
know that it is my fault.

7.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
find a pen. Spill it out.

8.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
put yourself back together again and make me proud.

9.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am
and I’ve already gone,

find me in your words.

Resuscitate me with your ink.

Know that I am sleeping on every page of every notebook
you own, and my darling,

even in my nonexistence, you are still my favorite poem.