"John."

We call it talking shop.
My parents both have their PhDs,
and I?
Well,
I work fast food.
So while I explain that the milkshake machine
is broken
for the fourth fuckin’ day in a row
and I’ve been called in to cover
three six hour shifts
this week, already,
my mom details her latest case.

See, they’re psychologists,
doctors with less respect
lifesavers of the sanity
we all pretend
isn’t important
some say therapy is for
the weak.
But listen to the story
I’m about to tell you:

they’ve been doing this
for just over two decades now
and I’ve never heard of abuse
this bad,
she says.

Confidentiality laws file-cabinet his name away from us,
so I’ll title this story John.
His namesake, John, called himself
the disciple Jesus loved the most.
If God is merciful, then,
why wasn’t he the first to die?
Instead, made spectator to the cross-hung
nailed-wrist blood-bath drowning
of every person he had ever loved,
and I wonder if dying didn’t sometimes
sound a lot more like hope
than every step
he had to take after that
but he kept walking,
believer in somedays and better things.
Just like

the John in my mother’s office
isn't angry
no matter how many

concentration camp families
incest slave trades
sensory deprivation bedtime stories
foster care put him through
his family sold him to

and I know life is warfare
no matter what your name happens to be
but John’s had steel-toed boots
kicked into his skull
since he was three years old

my little’s brother’s best friend
has him manipulated on a leash like a dog
and I’m sorry for that.
I’m sorry your ex-boyfriend’s an asshole
I’m sorry you don’t have
money for college
I’m sorry for all the things I’ve left behind
and this poem makes me a hypocrite
for the things I complained of
in every poem before this, so

I’ll be the first
but take a hard look
at all the things you’ve lived through
and how they’ve made you who you are
then take a harder look
at all the things you haven’t lived through
and we think we’ve done things
to deserve brighter skies than these?

But the John in my mother’s office
isn’t angry
so what kind of soldiers are we?

And are we waging war against things
that should not have made us so weak?

i'm going to run away to the orphanage. that's all there is to it.

what i put my mother through.

I.

This is an airplane.
It’s three a.m.
and the fasten seatbelt noise
is polite like a fire alarm
neatly placed on my eardrum;
I am screaming
like two-year-old tantrum.
I am 14.
This is an airplane.
I swear the walls are closing in
like a fist clenching neatly
around my body
thickly coated in perspiring and dry throat
pounding the floor
with the might of my feet
like it will time-travel me forward
through the hours
between now and baggage claim,
this is an airplane
this is an airplane
this is an

II.

80 passenger athletic education expense.
Post-cross-country return voyage
dark like the highway fading too fast,
being eaten by the wheels,
I am being eaten by the wheels,
watching the windows compress
stove-topping my breath
blood-boiling me alive like
my panic attack on the brink
breathe in
breathe out
breathe in
breathe

III.

like coming up for air,
ration is slowly
lest your lack of tolerance
drown you in oxygen,
but it’s hot in here.
The excuse for an air conditioner
mocking me for the stomach ache,
and anxiety.
This is an airplane.
Again.
Now, I am not afraid of the sky
or horizon,
in fact,
it’s the walls barred between us
that claustrophobia me
into hysteric chains
breathe in
breathe out
don’t let the head
tidal wave over you just yet,
this is an airplane
with wheels
are those clouds
or the highway being swallowed
because

IV.

These heatstroke manias
all seem to blur themselves
into one giant of an overreaction.
Dear Mom,
I’m sorry about the way back when
I didn’t mean to be so much
lack of control
but even now,
I sometimes see walls
as collapsing cement boxes
wrapping themselves around my consciousness,
waiting for me to choke.

dear sean's girlfriend, you are amazing. love, danielle

the orphanage hogar de los ninos, that's jordan walking at the bottom.

april means napowrimo...

mostly just weird freewrites for now.

#4

Hello tornado.
Wicked witch am I?
There are rainstorms in my joints,
spine,
and heart valves
or I'd dry up
maybe it's the diagnosis
to why I waterfall
so much,
but, personally,
I'd rather be buried
in a river
than a desert.

#5

It was one of those
I-know-this-won't-work-out
but-let's-play-anyway
(like we hadn't been
since my playgrounds)
I figured,
the inexperience was getting old
so we pretended to shallow away,
you were all inkwells
and microphones
and oops -
I pretended like giving a damn was
extra extra
read all about it,
that's just it, though.
Read
all
about
it.
Like how I'm too honest
with every soul
but my own.
See,
we both know this didn't start
when I learned how to line-break.
That I've been writing you
on my heart
since I could twirl pens like batons
the way some children
have friendship,
and I'm supposed to
freeze-tag a name on your collar
I'll settle for
lifeline.
You're the way I understand.
The way I learned to pray.
How to stand up for myself.
The fire to my winter solstice.
Language, you.

#6

The lines in your brow
matched the crevices
in your knuckles.
In a way,
you almost looked like the rarity
of an honest chapel,
so were you praying?
Were you panhandling for grace?
Or were you preparing
to stand and tumble-kick-fight
like wolves in my spirit.
Trust me,
I don't know what leprosy
is etched in the tiny canyons
of your portrait
but I hope you are not so strong
as to believe
(like I usually do)
that you're chasmed alone.

coping mechanism?

When they asked me to leave the orphanage,
I started crying like
whatever home I had ever built
inside my chest
had just been burned alive
and yes I am exhausted
and yes this is typical
and yes I am always
emotional instability

but, Tijuana, you don’t look like much
worth crying over
the way people talk about you
had got me thinking of home
as looking like a war zone
so a week ago
when the airplane landed
I was almost surprised
that you still smelled like things
I had always meant to learn

like poverty is not a noun
like she always has a name
this time, it was Maria.
And Pablo, Natalia, Anna, and Manuel
like love is not red cardstock
heart-shaped valentines
like they teach Americans in elementary school
it is 10 high school students
who otherwise would probably avoid eye contact
like adolescent class systems
actually mean something

it is those 10
learning how to hammer
and lay cement
and the pain of straddling rafter beams
at the exact same time

nowhere else is soccer like an orchestra
nowhere else are packed lunches like
Jesus feeding five thousand
nowhere else can dirt feel so much
like perfume and clean sheets
we built a house
and to the day I die
I will never cease
to almost believe it was a dream

Jordan gave me the keys
Jordan is my older brother’s twin
become God’s voice to remind me
that sometimes when I burn inside
it’s what makes me who I am
Jordan gave me the keys
told me it was my job
to hand them to the family
and I didn’t cry, yet.

I didn’t believe that I would ever have to fly away
just like I don’t believe
that we really built a house

from the roof of the orphanage,
the horizon is the crooked teeth
of a girl who could never win the pageant
because she couldn’t afford dentistry
but she has eyes
like you and I can’t imagine
so thank God I can call her home

the chaos here is being clean after a thunderstorm
the chaos here is not being afraid of the truth
nowhere else are dirt roads
paved with diamond memories
nowhere else have I cried for understanding too much
but everywhere else there is chaos
and everywhere else there are houses to be built
because everyone burns inside
just like me

when they asked me to leave the orphanage
I started crying like
I would never see you again, Tijuana,
maybe I will come back,
but I was wrong
when I thought
that I had not done enough here for now
because Maria has a ceiling
and a real floor
and so do Pablo, Natalia, Anna, and Manuel
I try not to cry too much anymore
I don’t want to extinguish
the firefight someone started in me
because there is chaos everywhere
but like orphans who know your name
sometimes heaven and home
both have to be a little broken
to believe in them.