I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS PRETTY


And then I turned into a girl. Always steel. Always silver. Always gray. Cold. Sharp. Exterior.

But someone lit a small pink petal with a tiny flame. And that pink turned fire red and consumed the monotone. Then the sepia came.


I worry too much about everyone around me. I think about her and how misery has covered her like bear fur in a false winter. I think about how sex has smothered him like slick oil, making him slip on his own desires. And about her rigidity, like a lightening bolt, has struck her straight into a perpetual pose and the inevitable gout found her. And their denial; how it covers them with ash – taking away the myriad hues of truth.

And myself and how I manipulate the edge of pavement and dirt. How I avoid the cuts at my feet.

“Come back to the center” some collective cries. But I stay dumb with lush, on purpose, watching the realness of it all swirm around me, like a peripheral parade chanting aside me and I am but a spectator to it.

Sometimes I like to get lost. And I know when I’ve put away my compass. And I use him. I use his warm body to find me – make me feel human. I use him, his cascading hair, deep breathing, whispering voice and sweat. And I lie a little bit to myself. Closing my eyes I let myself dip, for a sliver of time, into the possibility of him letting go. Imagining us by the tickling sound of skinny water pushing forward in a shallow creek over small pebbles, tiny rock. I imagine us in silence and only looking at each other underneath a swallowing, overcast sky – waiting for the rain.
And it is the rawest kind of beauty.

So, I imagine these things while he’s over me and his mouth suckles me. then I realize he could be anybody and it would be okay. He is a shadow come to life. Flesh appearing on his dark bones. Warm liquid swimming inside of him. And suddenly he is human before me. eyes sparkle in the indigo light and I see the river in them. And this empty cavern inside of my chest is suddenly filled with the sharp UV rays of the day’s sun. it finds me cuddled in the corner, still young and naïve and waiting to be found by love. I am like an abandoned child with torn, dirty clothes. Fresh faced. Dirty faced. Scared. Not-trusting. White-pink, small paths of tears already created underneath my eyes, the way that small water carves its path into ancient earth. I am curled up and remembering when I was a fetus – longing to be closed eyed and fed by my mother.

And so I pretend that he is the sun – that which has brought a song into my silence. And the melodies are like magic carpets and I ride the treble out high, dropping with the bass underneath the clouds. I am a girl laughing in the air carried and loved by the syncopated dips of notes and sounds. My melodic parent keeping me safe in the womb of sound.

And I just want to be loved. Embraced. Filled with lucidity while limber. It’s okay to be limber and just let gravity let me rest.

Then, in the midst of all this noise the silence found me. In the midst of all this colorless space, I have been discovered by the rainbow – and sepia has turned into contrasted brightness. Every color is bold. Every color takes on its purpose.
And there is harmony while holding my breath.

I didn’t know I was pretty until I turned into a woman. Always linen. Always ivory. Always immaculate. Hot. Blunt. Interior.


I didn’t know I was pretty until I realized ---- it never mattered.
And I have ended where I began.