DESERT ROSE

“The most beautiful part of your body / is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent / with the world.” – Ocean Vuong

it is the static days that remind me again how the
place i’m going is more important than the place i am, but most
of the time fear steals the belief that i will become more beautiful
than a flower. as much as i hate it, i want him to be right – in part
to hope i’m not invisible, but mostly i’m too young to be weary of
lies. i promised i’d love these tempests, but maybe peace is your
argument: promises don’t need to be made to be kept, right? a body
whose fragile shadows are even warmer than its soul is
what i’ve been trying to keep alive. maybe you too, for where
today is the promise of tomorrow we will never be blind. it’s
a place warmer than the superficial that we were always headed
towards. for what it’s worth, i’m still looking every day &
the sector of me that doesn’t believe in promises can remember
how i’d like to take you there. i admit i wonder if loneliness
is as beautiful as they say, but if it is then everybody is
already home. perhaps solitude teaches that a fracture can still
be made whole.

 

                               i would like to be a desert rose this time
and reap color like the fruits of paint. i would be spent
at dusk & alive at dawn. there would be nobody to be with
& nobody to ever dictate my place. there would be the
apocalypse of lies. nothing to promise in the whole world.