Icarus flew.

The stories, those told time after time,

Carved into the walls of our minds,

Say that he fell.

They recount the melting of his wings, the burning of his flesh,

The way he disappeared into the sea never to be seen again.

They say that he failed.

That he was so so close,

That he nearly touched the sun,

But that he never made it.

And that he never could.

He strived too hard, too fast, and he failed.

They teach us that we will fail.

We are Icarus.

We read between the lines and see that he flew.

Icarus flew!

We see his joy, hear his laughter, share in his triumph.

Sure, Icarus fell.

With complex pronouns

introductions start stiffly,

a choice in each word.

Confidence and trust?

I’m not an object, but “it”

brings me joy and pride.

They/them is pride too,

reserved for all those less queer,

less understanding.

Those who won’t chance it,

won’t understand it through me,

who’ve known, so long, “she.”

When “they” is a leap

in behavior and thinking

“it” is far away.

Dehumanizing?

It was, yes, but now it’s mine.

You will find no soft smiles here, love. No gentle swell to my chest, no flowing hair or smooth skin.

Instead my laughter is a snort, my chest is bound, and the only part of me I shave is my head.

I am kind in my mannerisms but violent in myself, violent in my wholeness. I am not a prize, not a bonus, not a trophy, not a thing to be treasured. I am bloody and angry and I will hold the door open for whoever I can.

The only things that burst under my nails are scabs and what cakes my hands is dirt. I am scared of spiders and the dark and never will I hesitate to follow my dog when she bolts away across the street.

There is something between my ribs and my lungs and my spine and I am not sure it is a heart. Maybe a fox has clawed its way in there, biting and spitting and bristling. Maybe a dog, nervous and angry and loving all at once.

It is not the dog in my chest that beats when I sit with a friend or run to a class, so maybe I do have a heart. If I focus hard enough I can see it there, nestled in my rib cage, pumping blood through my veins, a cycle that anything could break but only one thing will.

I don’t fear death. It’s not on my list and I don’t plan to ever let it be. I fear pain sure, and loss and even fear itself, but death? The act in it’s finality has never made my heart skip a beat.

Sometimes, when the fox and the dog and the heart have become too much, to bright and red and loud, I become something else. I am quiet then, a different sort to my usual brand. I am stiff in my movements, fogged in my head, and it takes a while to wake up again.

When I wash my hands, wet clay seeps out from beneath my nails.

My fingers are fragile things, my knees breaking at the bend, my face stiff and unmoving. My chest is a different story, solid ribs made soft by a beating heart. No one seems to notice what a wonder it is that I am alive, let alone breathing. No one notices that I am drowning with lungs full of slip.

I’m sorry for cracking, but this heat is drying me out, and I can’t quite keep it together.

I’m sorry. I’m crumbling, eroding like a statue with every movement. There are pieces of me all over the floor, pressed far into corners, deep into the carpet. It will take a long time for those pieces of me to be swept away.

I wish I could start over. Take this fresh clay heart out from behind my ribcage and mold it into something new. Something permanent, hardened by fire like all proper sculptures.

Somewhere, a star is exploding.

Somewhere, a child is crying. Somewhere else, a child is laughing. Somewhere else a child is dying. Somewhere a child is not feeling anything at all.

Somewhere, there is a calf being born. As the moon rises over the field that it lies in, it sees the stars through more eyes than its mother. It will never see the sun.

A body lies in the back of a hearse. A different body lies in the back of an ambulance. Both have blood on their hands, and both leave mourners. One leaves a job behind, and one leaves more mourners than the other.

Someone is celebrating a birthday, and someone is visiting a grave, and someone is having a breakdown, and someone is dancing in the rain, and someone is mowing the lawn, and someone is walking the road less traveled by, and someone, somewhere, is writing a poem about complexity and layered lives and the entangled beauty and futility of choice.

Somewhere, as the sun comes up, a worm encounters something it has never tasted before. There is citrus in the soil, an orange rind dropped into the compost bin, and it writhes in ecstasy at the sharpness of it. Soon, the moment will be over. The rind will be absorbed into the soil, and the worms will be at peace.

A dancer, draped in brilliant silver, arcs across the dark room, kicking up glitter and confetti as she goes. In the center, a man in tan and gold stands transfixed, completely unaware that the spotlight is on him, bathing him in a warm yellow glow, turning his suit from a silky cream to a buttery gold, as his hair seems almost to sparkle.

The dancers twirls around him, getting closer and closer but never touching, then spinning further and further away, locked in her orbit. The man makes no moves to reach out, looking almost afraid to disturb her, but he watches all the same, a look of wonder in his eyes.

Sometimes, the spotlight on the dancer is too slow, and her glowing gown goes muted and dark. She never falters at the loss of light, and watching her spin back into it is like a watching a transformation, a baptism.

Sometimes, the spotlight on the man shuts off. Usually only for a moment, but he goes from a beacon of light to a grey statue with the flick of a switch, and his change back to that figure of gold is mesmerizing.

I wish I was afraid of whales instead of spiders.

I think it would be so much easier, if a bit of a shame to have my reverence for them replaced by a scuttling fear.

But when you’re scared of spiders, there are only so many places you can go to avoid them, only so many things you can do to protect yourself from that fear. If you were scared of whales, instead, then anywhere there were spiders, you would be safe.

It would be worth it, I think. Almost no matter the cost. It would be worth quite a lot, to be able to choose your fears before they started. To be able to sculpt what terrifies you.

You know what? Here’s to the memories of the people we stopped talking to.

Here’s to A and C and I. Here’s to the little girl at the McDonald’s playplace all those years ago. Here’s to J from kindergarten, and here’s to all the teachers who I’ll probably never say more than 10 words to ever again. Here’s to my grandad, and my papá, and my great aunt, and my uncle, and my dog and my two cats and my two birds and my four fish. Because pets are people too, right? At least in the way that matters.

Here’s to the horses I’ve ridden and will never see again. Here’s to the cows I’ve driven by, here’s to the birds I’ve craned my neck out to window to watch as they soar.

What the hell, let’s go further. Here’s to the places I’ll never set foot in again. Here’s to the trees I’ve photographed and forgotten about, here’s to the ocean I’ve seen once and the stars I’ve seen a million times but there’s no guarantee I’ll see them tonight. Here’s to the clouds and the sun and the moon and all the things and places and people that I see all the time and take for granted.

Here’s to the ghosts. Because what is a ghost if not a memory in someone else’s brain? Everything I will never see again is a ghost. My memories of it are locked away in my head and they will never be updated, never be refreshed. There are whole entire people in my brain who don’t exist anymore, either because they died or because they changed. Is changing not dying? Just how much of you can you change before the old you is dead?

The streets are filling up with water.

It pounds steadily against the asphalt, fans out from under the wheels of cars, hits against rooftops and leaves. (Drums against my ears, my brain.)

It seeps through drains slower than it falls against the earth, so all the dips and crevices of the road becomes vessels instead of land. (Bowls instead of strainers, cupped hands instead of spread fingers.)

This is the kind of rain where you expect thunder, expect lightning, but the skies are quiet. There is no howling wind, no wild flashes or rolling booms, simply infinite curtains of raindrops illuminated by headlights and lampposts. (The shower of rain and wheels against wet ground are the only sounds.)

Oh I wish I was outside. Or better yet, I wish I was in the road, lying on my back, feeling the water slowly rise around me. I wish I was in the rain, feeling it soak into my skin and my hair and my clothes. I wish so deeply that I was in the rain. (I wish I was the rain.)

I wish I was the rain! I wish I was part of the storm, wish I was sent hurtling towards the earth on a cloudy night, splashing against the ground in a million pieces, mingling with the streams and the puddles on the sidewalk. Wish I was part of the cycle, cloud to rain to puddle to vapor to cloud, and all over again and again and again. Do you think it ever gets old, being a raindrop? (I can’t imagine it ever could.)

Wouldn’t it be nice, to be outside in this. I can’t, it’s nearly midnight and I’ve always been too much of a coward to sneak out, not to mention I’m in my pajamas, and while my parents might not notice me leaving they’ll certainly notice me coming back in and drying off. (Or they wouldn’t. Or someone else would. It’s worth it, I’m just not brave enough.)

I miss, something. I’m not sure what. Maybe freedom? But I’ve never really been free, or had the type of agency to declare myself as such. Maybe the rain is what I miss, even through it’s been averaging once a week for the past month. I don’t know what it is that I’m missing, but I’m pretty sure it’s out there in the rain. I wish I was out there in the rain. (Maybe what I’m missing is myself.)

It’s not slowing down, which I’m glad for. I’d much rather it stop while I’m asleep, waking up to a damp, misty world. Better yet, it keeps raining, keeps pouring like this through the night and well into the morning. That way I get to be outside in it, feeling it at least partially the way I would like. I hope it doesn’t stop while I’m awake. It always feels like a tragedy when it does, like Orpheus and Eurydice. I turn to check that it’s still raining a good strong rain, and it dissipates. One look and that which I love, is gone. Not forever, at least, but generally for a while. I always miss the rain more potently when it leaves like that. (I always feel it more, feel it harder when it leaves like that.)

Anyway. It’s raining. It’s raining it’s raining it’s raining. The sun is long since set and the trees are black against the cloud-soaked sky and it’s raining like it hasn’t in a long time. (It’s raining like life depends on it.)

It’s raining.

I want to see what Van Gogh could do with an animation program.

I want to take him to an art museum, show him his life’s work hung on the walls for all to see.

I want to buy him a hotdog, sit with him on a dock somewhere near the city, see what he makes of Chicago in the dark.

Maybe a drive down the highway will feel right. Maybe a solar eclipse, or a meteor shower. Maybe just a good strong telescope and a cool, clear night.

Could you imagine being so loved by the world as to be blessed with her light? With her sense of color, of shape? With her warmth and coolness and wildness? I wonder what it is like to be a story cut short.

I am 16 and unkissed.

I am 16 and lying on the floor with my knees hooked over the edge of my bed, staring up at my fan.

I am 16 and breathless, watching meteors streak across the sky and leave trails of light behind them.

I am 16 and walking with my friends, trying to keep pace but always going too fast or being left behind.

I am 16 and missing my dog, missing my grandad, missing my best friend, missing myself.

I am 16 and loved, supported, valued. I know this. I am 16 and I know this.

I am 16 and unheld. I am 16 and un-beheld.

There is nothing poetic about cars caked in snow, I think.

I want there to be something poetic about it, to be able to find something profound and interesting in the way people drive along roads of slush with snow and ice on the edges of their windows.

Why do I love so easily?

I get it, I want to love, to see love and to live life with love in my heart, but what’s the point?

I love so much, so deeply, and so, so easily.

I think I set myself up for disappointment, for loneliness, but it’s not on purpose.

I just want someone to look at me, to see my heart, restrained, but full to bursting with love, and accept it from me.

Someone to help lessen my burden.

Someone to hold my shaking hands, to tuck my hair behind my ear and let me rest my chin in the crook of their neck.

Someone who will smile and say, it’s ok, it’s ok, I’m here. You can relax, I’ve got you.

I’m tired of being lonely.

I’m tired of being accountable to people, of maintaing relationships and keeping up appearances.

I’m tired of being sad.

I’m tired of feeling too much, being too happy or too angry or too sad, tired of feeling apathetic.

I’m tired of having responsibility.

I’m tired of having piles of things to do, piles of schoolwork and piles of practice and piles of things that require me to focus, to function.

I’m tired of being tired.

Was that my last allotted thunder for the night? That quiet pulse so faint it could have been a purr?

Or is this my final one- that clashing roll of thunder against the white noise of the rain.

The sky is green and grey and the road is black and wet and I am busy thinking, busy turning blue.

The air is sharp and frigid, the raindrops clear and cold, and the ground is sapping away my warmth the same way the thunder takes my soul.

Thunderclaps sound different because they come from different places in the clouds, bounce off different things before reaching our ears, and that means there’s three types of thunder.

The first is the quiet one, the one that tells you there’s a storm coming, the one that says the rain is falling and the sky is weeping and soon you will be too.

The second is like cymbals, slashing and metallic and angry and loud, like the sky is full of wrath and noise rather than clouds.

The third is my favorite type- the rolling waves of thunder that make you feel alive, that make you feel too much and not enough all at once but in a good way, the type that makes you want to tear your soul out with your fingernails and present it to the rain.

Oh the rain, not bright on this dark night but close enough, this coldbright rain, not the heavy drops it was before but rather just left of a mist, hanging in the air like icicles, gathering words and wishes.

The moon and stars are hidden and on any other night I would mourn, but no night like this could bring me anything but wild breaths and frozen skin.

“White Passing”

What does that mean?

I’m Colombian and Irish. I’m white passing. I’m white?

I’m asking questions and trying to learn and dying to fit in and grow and thrive but I’m bogged down by this questioning of identity that I can’t find an answer to.

My brother and I are the only white/Latino mixed people I know. My cousins are mixed, Colombian and Puerto Rican, do they struggle in the same way? Do they look at their skin and think it’s too light to be Latino? Do they only see one side of their heritage in their eyes?

The darkest I could call myself is tan, does that make me white? I’ve got the privilege, I know that. I’ve never had to sit through racist shouts, never had to brush off insults or yell back, even if my white family had to unlearn things once I was born.

My hair won’t hold a curl, my skin is tan and pink in the summer, my voice refuses to roll an r or smooth words with an accent. My eyes are from no one, a middle brown, not black or hazel like my parents. I know nothing of my cultures, my parents didn’t teach me and my family is too busy passing it on to their own children.

I can’t find anyone like me in media, no queer Colombian/Irish kids, and that might be too specific and maybe I shouldn’t even ask because everyone on tv looks like me, even though they don’t think like me or live like me.

I’m white passing, I think. I don’t know if I can call myself a person of color, and I hate calling myself white because I’m not, but am I? It’s so much easier to not explain, to not worry about judgment, to slip into white culture and not have to balance myself between two different worlds. I hate that I have the option, and I know that others consider me lucky for it.

I don’t know who to ask or where to learn or how to be an advocate when I don’t even know where I can advocate from.