I can’t do this
“Eyes like the stars”
bullshit.
I’m thinking Ken and Barbie doll
or Midge and Allen eyes.
Fake, wide-spread manufacturing 
when we’re supposed to be saying something new
or at least trying to.
The stars are many and beautiful and captivating
and your person probably is too,
but there has to be a better way to share it—
tell me what it feels like 
when they tie your shoe, attached to your leg up on them,
like you’re five-years-old again
or buy you a Choco Taco.

I have six pictures of that particular tree
when I went to take the seventh I had company,
That’s weird they have a fake tree,
and I thought of Christmas,
how this was as disappointing as the year
my mom didn’t like a single present
and said so.

I don’t even know
how to trespass there,
Cross that yellow line
press your chest against mine,
bear paw your back
and tilt up into your lower lip.
I want to know what it tastes like there
in the morning and after a few beers
and just after you’ve brushed your teeth
or eaten one of those shitty granola bars you like,
please.

There were fourteen vases for sale
and I couldn’t bring myself to buy one
because I knew they had held someone else’s flowers
and
I forever have a place in my mind
where people don’t want or need to capture flowers.

I opened googlemaps
to get directions
from my parent’s driveway
to Niagara Falls.
I don’t think I have ever 
missed everything as much as when
I saw myself as a gold star
next to the name of a city I do not love.
There is no good way to measure 
the distance between
your current location
and the idea of home.

Loud in the kitchen,
bangs of a five course meal, but,
somehow, always toast.

The school sign
outside of my high school
just says April
and I miss when April was just April
and nothing else.

If I were to simplify
my longest days,
it is only with a reminder
that even the wind
becomes worn.
By blowing shit onto us
or from growing tired, I guess.

I am my father’s daughter.
I let out good things—
kind words, salutations, praise,
and keep the rest inside
nestled somewhere behind my ribcage
where you’d have to crack every single individual bone
to have a piece of that part of me.
I am my father’s daughter.
I cheated on tests, on men,
on myself
every time I said yes to a no thing.
We are chameleons,
my father and I.
Can enter any room, any home, any country, any place
and find a way to assimilate
whether we like it or not.
I am my father’s daughter,
eyes wide open, mouth going like firecrackers, teeth light my face up like the fourth of july smile,
nothing but sparks and show coming out,
but inside, quiet.
A silent vigil for things not said,
but swallowed.
Forever moments of silence for
all of the broken parts we were shown not to share
by other people’s hands and “it’s our secret, keep quiet.”
I am my father’s daughter
and if he notices, he never shows it.
I am another mausoleum in his graveyard
of quiet.

I think about walking around with a sign on me that says:
“Poet inside”
Feelings are flowing with this one.
A bird flew by and she’s written a line.
A small warning to others of
Be careful what you do,
she just might write it.
Maybe disguise it in a haiku
with too few syllables to be sure it is you.