I don't plan it
The things I tell my mother
As she sits with me on the front porch
We feel like southern sunflowers
Soaking in the thick May air
Watching the sun fold over the bay
Her wrapped loosely in a cotton afgan
My head resting against an unfinished post
Each swimming in woman thoughts
Though we'd rather be in the ocean

Sweet salty smells drain down the back of my throat
And I can just imagine
Duel bodies
Feminine and dressed
Dancing in an everlasting ocean
Finally having reached a place of pure reflection
Of our unstable states of mind

What do we care
If it is the calm sunset that sings into our skin
Or the water in a rage
Breaking open our pores
Tangling our hair in the torn seaweed
Until we drown
And our bodies float to the surface
Crawled upon by legless fish
And I find it so funny
That such a life would parallel the ones we lead

The ones where sometimes
Our men shyly kiss us beneath a mound of stars
Revealing their innermost thoughts
An essence draped onto our shoulders to carry

Or wake us in the strangled morning light
Where the sun is still sleepy
And pour all they know into our fragile frames
Willing us into soldiers
As the lantern of day yawns and blushes
Somehow strangely wanting of our nakedness
Against clean sheets and daydreams

Yet most days are not so
Instead they are clothed in strain
Pulling the pounds of years across a house
Attempting that they weight of all will purify us
And make it into a home
We become masters of carpentry
Pulling out our bones and arranging them
Into glistening white towers
Supports and foundations for a bloodless country
The cost of being the half of an accomplishment
Our shame and prized possession
Of facing the pretty patterned wallpaper of feelings
And tearing every tiny speck off
Until all that is left is a commitment
To love
To friendship
To endure

I am young yet
Some people might say
There are no pins placing me against this scene
No need for an actress
In an age of Hollywood flavored dreams
My body is a vessel of opportunity
To be used for my own purpose
To be carved out by my own hand
As if one demise is better than another

And how I long to be timeless

In my imagination I wonder
What rocks people might chip off of my words
Trying to comprehend my impossible verse
Thinking my speech a depression
Teaching girls that my exclusive eternity is a burden
Overflowing with the wrongs of history
As a man takes a woman
Without knowing she is the complexity that birthed him
The only thing that will keep him alive
I am the breath devoted to he who is belonging to me

Amazing
Unsettling
The things I tell my mother
When we're alone
It is a wonder my secrets don't spill repeatedly
Like a stream of sea air
Lost between the point of my mouth to hers

Yet some things are still unimaginably sacred
Sewn beneath my tongue
And the tightness between my teeth
Lost to dentists and sisters alike
But perfectly plucked by his tongue
Entrusted only to him
His burning holding hands with my words
Keeping me always