Coming of Age

I like you
but I hate the
expressions you make
in your photographs
because you don't
make
those faces in real life,
with sugar-crusted
teeth,
Nyquil every night
for weeks.
I guess it means
I'm coming of age
when my brain swells
more quickly than my heart.

For Future Reference

My face: the moon, pocked,
less knowable, less explored
but don't forget me.
Forgive me: I'm present.

Here, there is water.
Here, there is a reminder
of your past, of your future,
of landing softly
and writing your name
on my cheek.

Look here, for future reference:
I am in your sky,
a female stereotype,
visited by shells but not by you
for a long, long time.

Winterreise

The cold evicts me
from my own breath, which is
seized inside my core.

To be sure, my life is not as hard.
Bread is easy now, and
it tastes better,
but that doesn't stop the cold.

You talk to me because
you want an audience.
I am a receptacle for the trash
that comes out
of your cold, dry mouth.

The bread rises, its insides soft and hot,
its outside hard and cracked.
I crack a smile, break bread
with you, a darling, cold and frail.

I am ungrateful. That's what depression means.
It means that my throat always needs to be cleared.
It means that my voice
is a crack in the shell of ice
that separates the present from the past,
the winter from the spring.
I am always a child, cold and hungry.