I often find myself at a loss for words.

Communicating in some other language,

Like that of a bee,

Or an ant,

In a social system where no amount of the language could be understood by a step.

So I use my hands,

Folding

Flipping

Riffling

Mapping out some sort of story,

In a visual way.

Presenting the movement of your body on my fingertip.

I want to become fluent in all your body language.

Let the tip of my tongue be the whispers.

And the laughter of your hips,

And the melted rain on your eyelash tips.

And then it hits.

That conveyed structure of your voice,

A melting pot of a whole new language.

I have to find a new way to present it,

In a way that doesn’t come so natural.

Because I bury my cigarettes in the snow,

So others around me can’t see what I find beautiful.

See I want to look at my watch and tell what day it is by the scent you’re wearing,

Because you look so good after the gym.

And I struggle with not repeating myself,

Folding my hands in ways that can’t be understood.

You speak in a language I find no words for,

But your body moves in the language I speak.

Like the brushing of cheeks,

And even if you can’t hear it,

That’s a damn good technique,

Some like that of rustling sheets.

I want nothing more than to communicate with you

With expressions exchanged across the room,

Because words are not only spoken by the breath,

But by the language I speak,

And I don’t keep track of the days of the week,

Because times just a disappointing tracker,

That I often want to lose,

But I’d spend any day of the week getting lost with you.

I want to converse in words you understand,

Grasp onto,

Take with you,

Move motions with my hands,

In some way that means more than the clenching of a fists,

For the struggling wrists.

I want to take hold of them,

Let you speak in my voice.

Hear the thoughts in my language.

So you may somehow see,

That signs are no more than gestures,

Words are no more than meaningless,

And time is a whole lot longer with you in the room.

-Stephaniee Ann

Because you, in you, I found a muse. A reason to write again. The words that escape your mouth only give me reasons to write. So for that very reason alone, let me take a trip with you.

Let me sleep in the back of your truck and watch the stars with you, until the night transitions back to day time.

Until the colors of the moon shift to a brighter day.

Let me laugh at your stories until you can’t stand my laughter, until you tell me it’s not funny.

Until the sound of giggles can fill an empty room.

Let me write you stories wile you a symphony in the background, until I put your guitar on the floor and tackle you under the sheets.

Until you play the strings like the veins under my skin, tracing the bumps along my arm.

With trembling fingers, I was to write you something beautiful, a melody in my heart only played by you.

Only I’m not so good with games,

So teach me the abilities to win you over, because, lets just say a trip with you would be well worth the wait.

For nine hours I saw the beauty of the world. The layers of colors in the sky as they transitioned from day to night. I found comfort in an old blanket in a stranger’s room, an unknown memory awaiting me around every new glance. I saw the colors of a cigarette in a way that made it beautiful. I found dying beautiful. Only, I lost it soon after. The colors finally faded. That beauty I once saw is gone.

“Be still,” i say. im going to write you a story.
hide you away and seek you out later, roughly snuggled under the covers.
your fur is hidden, a secret monster trapped inside.
you hold comfort in your claws as you dig and scratch.
find the itch. we’ll sleep in a big pile and stay up for hours surrounding in each others warmth.
i want to be king. start a rumpus inside of you that links to me.
you carry yourself with such pride, so i must hide you away in the tower of trees.
well scream from the cliffs, we are animals. the wild ones, no one ever talks about.
“stop,

be still,” i say.

“you animal.”
tackle me to the bed and take me with you. well sail on the waves of blankets till we seek out the caves.
once the light shines through the window you hold me close.
“please don’t go.
ill eat you up,
i love you so.”

all the things you do, 

when I was younger we’d hop fences and chase down demons in church parking lots. 

burning bibles in the back and hiding bruises on our inner thighs.

burnt ashes in memories until there was nothing to come back to.

I never once forgot how to breath,

even when the lights were off,

and I could still feel your breathe hit my skin and taste the scratch marks that you had been marking.

I did, however, forget to feel.

Feel the touch of your fingertips on the steering wheel that night we were screaming at each other for things that seem so meaningless now. 

I want to be that book beside your nightstand,

the one you hold onto every night.

The thing you find most comforting, 

because when do you get to read of such love poems from me?

I want to keep it safe,

hidden like a treasure, stuck in a prisim. 

illuminating colors that only you can touch.

Im real.

i came out in a world of no chances. proud was a word not heard in my house and my biggest concerns was when id be smart enough to hide under the bed instead of under the covers.

i heard the whispering pants and touch of rough hands hold me tight while i cried under the pillows.

“it’ll all be over soon.”

that man was suppose to be a father.

i grew up in a town where the worst crimes were those of slaughtered eggs across wooden fences and glass panes in autumn.

the hidden stories were behind close doors. the stale scent of cigarettes and line of powder left a trail to her room. my grades were never high enough.

“why can’t you bring a boy home. i want grand kids someday you know.”

that was suppose to be a mother.

this is only some of my story. the parts im willing to write down and leave a mental note of.

the day i told my mother i was gay:

i was 14. i asked her, “what would you do i liked girls?”

she turned toward me and said, “my best friends gay, do you think i care?”

the funny thing was she went into her room and cried for a week. she became depressed and then i was treated differently. i guess its not as acceptable when its your own child.

unfortunatly, i cannot say it was easy but i am 18 years old now. i am gay. and i am damn proud of myself, weather they be or not.

Someone once told me to write my feelings on paper. Said my words were better read than heard. I proved her wrong.
Tonight, I screamed from the sidewalk of my house and told the ants to listen. Shouted words to the only ones who would listen.
Yet I heard no one clapping, to the poems that no one wanted to hear. The reality of their secrets, hidden skeletons between the vacant spaces of their ribcages.
I watched their pressing hands on the heads of their children sheltering their ears from the disbelief of evil.
When we were younger we found a dead bird outside under a tree and we buried it under my father’s bed.
We knew revenge hurt more than bruises and that childhood dreams never did really exist.
So as I lay in bed with you, holding you as close as breath can get. I want to gaurd your heartbeat. Let you live in the illusion of simple. Light.
Don’t speak anything out loud to anyone.
Don’t speak of what you find beautiful.

i want to hold my chest to yours until our hearts beat simultaneously.

until the blood runs through us like water streaming through every last water fall. drowning our our sorrows, filling up our lungs.

one night you told me, “don’t worry love would find it’s way home.”

I’ve left the front door unlocked and a candle lit every night for years now.

I was never quite good with balance,

once, three years ago i stormed away from a girl trying to be upset and as i turned to look at her i fell to my knees.

you carried my heart beat, never left me waiting, but waited hours on me.

I was a hopeless romantic,

once, i bought a girl nine roses. set a word on each stem and had one delivered every period at school by strangers.

she rearranged them last period only for them to spell out, “let me prove I am not like the rest.”

I knew that love came to easy.

I stuffed popcorn, a copy of a movie, her favorite candy,

and a teddy bear i had found at a garage sale for two dollars that i named Eli into a box to send to a girl a thousand miles away just to have a date with her.

I was sucked into the illusion that i could keep any girl i wanted. only, girls were something i wasn’t suppose to find attractive.

once, i kicked Jeremy Osborne on the playground for trying to kiss me,

told him he looked like the painter who lost an ear, i never saw one so crooked.

so on these nights i am feeling lonely i light a candle,

leave my front door open, and welcome strangers in like house guests.

trust comes too easy.

i piled blankets over windows, ones ive used as a child to block the monsters from disrupting my dreams at night.

hung a sign on the front door saying no ones allow to disturb my fortress of solitude.

tattooed the carpet with stained alcohol and found comfort in a pack of cigarettes.

moved the couch to the center of the living room and showered the floor with pillows.

i found hidden tears in old movies and safety in my blankie.

put on my sick cloths and stuffed wrappers in the couch.

this is my sick day. 

the room occupation sign set 536 individuals,

so cramming a little more than 1000 would be nothing more than a simple task.

air hung the scent of shattered dreams, sweat, and broken hearts.

adolescents raped away from new adulthood.

seats sat aligned like frail backbones, and i wanted nothing more than to leave, my mind was lost in a simpler place.

i hung from tree branched in my grandmother’s back yard,

stood on table tops screaming, “Rosie O’Donald, hit it John!”,

having imaginary cooking shows like i was a tv host.

i stood on that stage and watched the empty chairs in front me sit no one but the air and accumulated dust of empty gym lockers, and expired milk.

my mind still trapped in smalled years,

I told Taylor Romeo she was the most beautifulest girl on the playground in 5th grade, and she said thanks.

I walked past her in the halls 8 years later only to hear her tell me how beautiful she thought i looked, my heart melted.

My tassel hung on the right side of my head and i thought of all the times i thought i had done the right thing.

When i was five i had bitten my dentist enough to draw blood over the simple task of cleaning my teeth.

I told the police when they had asked me if my father had ever touched me or hurt me a lie.

Back then i was scared of things that had no movement. Imaginative dreams suspended in the curves of my brain cells.

i have nothing more than a body drenched in white,

my backbone standing tall like a flagpole.

because this. this is my surrender.

i am nothing more than young child, standing in a cap and gown,

i know nothing more than the slope of a tangent line on a circle, the movement of gravity toward an object.

i am subject to all life course, none offered in the text books.

we chased dragons on the playground. hunted monsters in the night.

until one night, monsters hunted us.

we got lost on old streets, returned several days later, no recollection of where we had been.

we held our dreams in jars of fireflies, not letting any escape.

until one night, we let one go, and as we watched it fly away, we knew it’d never come back, much like that childhood.

we’d stuff things into our pants at stores knowing we’d never get the finer things in life.

our parents distored our minds into thinking we were always wrong more often than we were right.

the only people we trusted were each other.

we stood on moutains the size of ant hills and demanded to be kings, we’d scream cuss words to the sky asking why we had traveled the paths we did,

because we were never accepted.

in october, your parents sent you away to take care of the monsters and we made it an adventure.

we’d swore we’d continue that chase on the playground, battle those streetlights at night,  and walk where we wanted, because we were kings of ant hills.

we wrote our stories on papers, sent our feelings through the mail.

months passed and i swore i saw your face on milk cartons.

i dug a time capsule in my heart and buried my memories in it. i screamed at the sky alone and heard nothing but an echo,

we were the accepted wild ones.

i went to great escape yesterday.

the wind blew past my hair and screams echoed in the air as kids laughed and parents bickered at the money that was given away at the simplest of games.

i won 4 prizes. none at my own expense. i got a girls number. by my own dumb luck.

but on our way down we saw something i didn’t quite understand.

a huge explorer had ran into a ditch spun and flipped upside down with a man and a dog inside. he was trapped.

we were through the mountains with no cell reception, no signal, nothing but 10 teenagers. the guys cut the seat belt off the man inside and pulled him out, a ranger passing through helped but we were stuck there.

we had stopped twice on the way down. once for coffee, once for gas. we were a minute away from probably being in a huge car wreck.

“go to hell.”
that’s what you told your pigtailed sunlit daughter hanging from the jungle gym.
her only problem was being home before the streetlights were.
proud wasn’t a word to come by.
her problems grew to when to tell her mother she was gay.
when to make the word pronounced in the home.
proud.
you learn from the best, only a mother is a nurturing hand for their young.
your daughter learned more from a lion, stood tall with a backbone, because you, you’ve stood like a jellyfish.
fragile. nothing more than a spineless addict.
you have no identity. not a mother.
weak.
resentment is a harsh word to swallow when you’ve got nine medications stuffed down your throat, huh mother.

Your daughter has been nothing but a straight-a student.
Your daughter has learned more making love to a woman than your nurturing hands, mother.
Your daughter is gay. She’s outspoken, but she is nothing more than a little lion.
Her eyes set on the most precious of dreams held by the tiny speck of hope she has left.
Pixie dust. In her eyes she’s still a child, bound by the prepubescent talk on the playground.
Only wishing to make you proud.
Only, mother, the jungle gym is just too big and your daughter, is just too small.
Instead you shout fire in her ears. That accumulating dust of her dreams engulfed in flames as she packs her bags.
Your daughter is gone.
Your daughter raised your sons as you sat in the bathroom crushing those pills under the bottle as you locked the door.
You came out with that sickly face I know too well.
Sick. Yeah mother,
I bet it felt good. Breathing in that powder and letting it rush to your brain, consuming your every motion.
Yeah, your daughter, has more brains than you ever will.
Mother, your self pity is worthless here.
This built up anger from the time of birth will burst into new found confidence.
The only thing your daughter ever wanted was a normal family.
A dad. A mom. Love.
That’s it. No underlying problems. No backwards, inside out pajama bottoms. No bruises or broken bones. No precipitating mist showered on by the constant blows of fire.
This daughter, your daughter, in her little lion mane has fallen to the masses. She’s wounded and done.
Your daughter is gone.