#mcpakisabi

I can’t hate myself because that would mean I hate you, 

and despite what we both let on, 

we both know that is not the case.

Being upset at you is like shattering a mirror with my fist.

Its shards caught in our throats like stingers lodged:

Anaphylaxis from words unsaid.

Our effigies are indiscernible from each other, 

Just like genetics passed down.

You make me take my glasses off when I cry

Because you see yourself in them.

Either way, we share the same eyes.

If Jesus was made in God’s fullest image, did his father too curse a

fig tree and cast the tables of merchants to the ground—

Dirty gold by droppings and the bark of a dried-up tree?

The fruit that falls not far from the tree is bound to sprout in that

same place,

Competing with its predecessor until one concedes under the

other.

The rotten wood becomes compost,

Food for the bad seed to grow the same way.

Until it’s cut and sanded into something useful to each other.

We eat at the same table on opposing ends,

The morning meal shared without conversation.

Two pairs of grubby hands, fat like breakfast sausages,

white was tainted red. blood, sweat, and tears watered this garden we cultivated. seeds we planted and nurtured with time, patience, and love. they gave me you: a red carnation, in full bloom. lover, you were always destined for more. for greater things.

i stopped growing, and the white returned, my red carnation. but you were no longer my white carnation, nor were you red. you were pink. as pink as my cheeks the day i met you. as pink as your lips after we first kissed. lover, i know you. 

other flowers tell me thus begins the end. an unforgiving winter is coming. the forecasts are in: our flowers are dying. before the end comes yellow. i love you, my carnation. 

should the day come that destruction seeks our garden, know that i choose you. a tree would have been stronger, but i choose you, my carnation. i would renounce the sun if it meant you would choose me too.

forever yours,

“Be the way you aren’t,”

Say the bursts and whispers in my head—

Can they stop? Can they?

‘Cause

Every single part of me

Couldn’t get any more uneven.

I’m no man and I’m no animal;

I’m a number, an odd one.

Down to the syllables of this work,

Every single line.

Somehow it’s all strange,