Looking into the mirror,
saying to myself:
I’m here, I’m here, I’m here
and inside me are many.
I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive
and my love is plenty.
I hear hope is the a good thing,
maybe the best thing
in low volume on the television,
but I forget to believe.
Let me tell you
how I remember.
When I go to hide,
all I see are eyes
closed above the noses
of all the noses
I know and love.
We rub
our fists against
our eyelids,
rid
the blur out
our slurred visions,
the ones we try to outcast,
rearrange,
switch the shadow
with the past’s scarecrows,
even though we leave
the body
uncured in its
stupid uncertainty.
We tell ourselves,
No one owns our wild,
and it’s true,
your survival is
the only truce you
cannot break.
The best thing about today
is that
our closed eyes
open
to a better place
to a place better
than where we came.
I don’t want to feel the same.
Where have we taken each other?
Every one of my students sing
Happy Birthday to You,
the breath in their laughter
undoing all of my disasters,
a perfect chorus of wind
to carry me back like sand
moving towards the sea.
I run my hands through
the wind, then through my hair,
then do it all over again, meanwhile
my smile is a guess
you shouldn’t underestimate.
I have left
the only arms and legs
I have left
to chase the sun
before it leaves.
I have left my hands
behind for you to hold onto.
Catch me if you can
I want to yell
I want to groan
to the well of feelings I feel right about now,
this moment
where the stars, the moon, and me
are lingering along the bayou,
alone in our darkness,
harnessed in a light
that surrounds the sky
I celebrate beneath on
the anniversary of my birth.
I’ve learned
you can turn
sadness into a memory,
then you can forget it.
In my twenty-fourth year,
I’m here, I’m here, I’m here
and inside me are many.
I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive
and my love is plenty.
You can’t steal my victories.
A POEM A DAY 