Little Spider By The Window Resting In The Shade I Like Your Coloring I Like The Web You Made

Poetry is just as visual As any other form of art.

The punctuation, the spacing, The length and width In the breaking of lines,

Thoughtful Arrangement Of words

Matters.

It matters as I am painting with letters.

It's part of the picture, The texture of poetry Is flowing, flowing.

Do you see? I ask,

D o  y o u  s e e  m e a n i n g?

Tell me why you ban the books Which tell stories of Two male penguins adopting a child, Books that show disabled kids And gender non conforming kids And black kids whose teachers Forget their names?

Tell me why you ban the books That challenge you Because they are written plainly About plain people Who are different from you?

Tell me why books are taken off shelves For being too explicitly queer When you force children to read Passages from the bible about Rape, genocide, slavery, and a hateful god? Why is your book not banned For depicting in detail such things?

What makes your book the exception? You censor children from truths And teach them a god will hate them Because they are different You teach children to hate themselves Because your book holds no space for them

Let me revel in these Small doses of sadness In their warmth, In that quick, biting Shot before blurriness

I find myself a sponge In a hot bath, soaking, Letting sadness fill me Until I become heavy

But in the small doses Measured in spoonfuls, In small bites, I cozy up with sadness Carrying it in my body

There are many places where

May begins as winter And ends as summer

I wonder if that's Hard on a month,

To always be in transition

I never owned you You lived a life beside me Our love was equal

You and I stand at the Shop counter We are buying a Freshly baked blueberry pie To bring over to your Brother's home towns away

You stand patiently In your thick woolen Overcoat, in the many layers Under your violet skirt That has faded to lilac

The shopkeeper counts Our shared coins And you look at me With the warmest eyes On this blistering afternoon

You look at me so innocently In this small, warm Bakery, like looking At me could melt the winter From our hats and mittens

You say thank you to the Kind man with the Graying mustache in The coziest voice I know as if it were my own

We walk down the street Down to the train, where You will sit close Beside me, and it will Not be the pie that warms us

You said my eyes Were so intense Like they were piercing you As if yours didn't Strike my face Like yours weren't fierce too

They say I keep Too many secrets But you know all of them You are my only Buried treasure Sapphire mixed with obsidian

I said you're in my blood Like caffeine Keeping my mind energized I see all the words You never say Just from looking in your eyes

I thought I saw him walking by Out of the corner of my eye Just a trick of the light A trick of the mind It was just a little cloud Casting a fleeting shroud A phantom little lie He was not conjured from the sky But for a second I had hoped Which I have never since allowed

I envy the orchid For choosing when to perish To go dormant for An eternity that lasts as long As it chooses

I envy the orchid That it might sleep forever Then rise swiftly Like a flowering phoenix Back to life

Grief is a large pelican Diving into the water where I was swimming peacefully Scooping me up in its beak

It carries me up from my home This is just nature's way I succumb to the darkness of Drowning in someone's mouth