“I Never Want to Make Sense”

I’m sorry I’m sorry, truly I am.

I’m about as impish and glint-eyed as Doctor Seuss and Sam-I-am,

or is? Or Was? —-minus the doctor part.

Though I suspect there’s a bit of Dr. Jekyll in me, lurking just beneath my whimsy heart.

I exist somewhere between the two—

between playful and restrained, between happy and something a little heavier.

I’m learning, slowly, how to balance both without letting either take over my growth.

I’ve tried to be you.

I’ve looked in the mirror and talked funny.

Almost bionic, but as a robot that stutters baaaa.

I often wonder if I’m the sheep herder or the grass.

— never the sheep.

I swallowed a cloud and hawked up a star.

I covered one eye, the moon winked from a far.

My brain’s made of noodles,

my thoughts-as raw as my cuticles,

bleeding and hanging.

My best friends are goblins, my therapist’s a tree,

I make small talk with the coral reefs.

My nose has dreams. My ear’s a door.

I lick the ceiling, claw the floor.

Yet, the world is a botox needle, too drunk,

too busy,

too sore.

The world sits on the edge of sense

silence in disguise.

A cage, a map, a suit, a tie.

I’d rather wear my mayhem raw,

without the padding in my bra.

Instead, unbound,

a tongue that whistles to the clowns.

Flimsy, floppy,

fish out of a bowl,

my aura dances in rhythmic vertigo.

I draw conclusions in spiral ink

then flush them down the bathroom sink.

The night owl who whoo's into blackness

from a tattered post,

the back of my head is where I see the most.

A wolf who howls because of sadness

but confidence is the blueprint to my madness.

I live by a set of rules, but not like you do.

It seems you’re all on different teams,

snarling your gods and raging your machines.

Mystery, stitched on my wrist in the

shape of a heart

and on the other, a question mark,

a creature of chaos, aligned with mars.

So let the world whisper, “she’s intense"

I twinkle my toes in secret, in regret

Because maybe strange is just another kind of sense.

Too quiet for the living, too loud for the dead.

And I’m done apologizing for my inner defense.

And still,

I’ve carried shame like unwanted foreskin,

for all the anomalous things within.

The way I vanish mid-conversation.

The chewing. The hesitation.

The confident-smile I give when I’m already gone.

I don’t want to explain why I grind my teeth or laugh in my sleep

why I sob when a moth lands near my feet.

Why I stay home, or speak in code,

or find poetry in a dying road.

I write lazy. I talk smack.

Rambling nothing, half-committed wit.

But when I want you to see I ache with care,

I church-up my words and color my hair.

Suddenly, the ink gets bold,

my cursive is coherent.

And now I'm top notch ‘dream girl’

strutting the skirt to your narrative.

If sense is a life-hack,

I’ll live in the crevices of your wandering tracks.

If truth is my hips in a mirror,

I’ll turn my back.

I’ve stopped justifying the ways I should exist

its my fairytale with a stubborn twist.

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P.S Don’t tell me that The Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist.