What if it could all be stripped away?
Every errant thought that ever betrayed my belief.
Every regret that ran through my dreams in the relentless dark.
All that would be left would be a bleached-bone skeleton, filled with the marrow of desire.

I would start anew.
The millennial phoenix.
The groundbreaking of a fresh me.
Unsoiled by expectation.
Unmade and unwashed.

But I could never be that.
I am needy and anxious, scaffolded with lies.
To erase who I am for a specious promise who I will be is a sin.
To sacrifice who I am is to burn an effigy to an eldritch god who is no longer there.

But still I sing a song of hope.
Because I know when the day comes, the day where I am fully who I want to be,
I will look behind me and hear the vague stirring of lyrics in my past.

So a lonely man strums on a well-used guitar on a mountaintop.
He forgets the people who left him.
He forgets the love he had.
He forgets.
He places his fingers in an untested position and strums a new chord.
The vibrations ring through the mountain range and fade into the mist, never to be heard again.

It will only chip away at the quick-dry concrete that has solidified around your nerve endings.
It will only make the world appear painted and tricks you into thinking black and white is Technicolor.
It will turn you into something more than you were while breaking you into smaller and smaller pieces.
It burns you in ways that fire is unable to move.
It will leave you naked in empty tundra when you should not be alone.
It will blind you with the illusion of change while inside you are stagnant.
Art will not save you.
So why won’t you stop creating?

I always dance at weddings.
My moves are all I need.
I always dance at weddings.
My feet move with lightning speed.

I dance until I should stop.
And then I dance some more.
The music pushes me further.
My stomps put holes in the floor.

So double knot your shoes.
Make sure you eat real light.
Because at weddings, I always dance.
We’re gonna have some fun tonight.

Something flips on a circuit breaker inside my head.
A melody appears.
I can’t sing the notes.
The rhythm speaks through my fingers.
The lyrics fall into a coma.
I hum the tune,
But every time I repeat it,
The notes change.
The rhythm shifts.
By the fourth time, the song is being played through the wall of a college dorm.
By the sixth time, the song is indecipherable, made of mumbles and whispers.
I hear the song for a final time before it floats away,
A plastic bag trapped in an updraft.
And I am left without music.

I saw an undulating sea, waves tipped with bone-white foam.
There were dolphins riding the crests, chirping “I love you” in dolphin speak.
Blue whales singing their mournful songs to each other from miles apart.
A lonely shipwreck covered in coral that had become a home to all sorts of marine life.
Sea turtles moving with a tender grace, making sure their children would remain unharmed.
Tiny fish cleaning off the teeth of sharks.
Angler fish hunting for their prey, surrounded only by darkness.

I saw a storm cloud heading for a New England village.
The children left their houses to watch the wall of water overtake their coast.
The fishermen put on their slickers and brought the boats to dry docks.
The skies opened up. Rain poured out in gallons, droplets the size of fists.
The streets ran with water, impromptu canals washing away cars like driftwood.

I saw a busted pipe in a slumlord’s tenement.
A little girl trying to sleep as thin droplets drizzled onto her threadbare pillow, soaking the mattress.
A father sitting at a table, picking through the last remnants of late-night McDonalds.

I saw a woman who was full to the brim.
Your depths unexplored.
Your wonders undiscovered.
Your beauty infinite and everchanging.
But all you were to me was a cup of water.
And I drank you up.

The mutt shakes loose his mangy fur, clumps raining down from his back.
He pads his way down Main Street,
The sidewalks deserted and in need of repair.  
The toy store has a sun-faded decal in its window.
The grocery store stinks of rotting pulp.
Flies swarm and plunge into citrus corpses.

The mutt looks around and blinks the dust out of his tear filled eyes.
A house appears, overgrown.
The rusted rotary mower bound by weeds.
The door creaks open, the mutt sneaks in.

Inside is a father and daughter.
Blood speckles the wall behind them,
A rainbow of red and gray.
Shotgun props up the father’s head.
The daughter’s hand hangs down, fingers locked in a gentle curve.
The mutt licks her hand.
He savors the taste and remember what it was like to be loved.

A traveler in the desert.
He comes across a statue with only imperious feet remaining.
On the statue is a plaque.
Pulling back his scarf, he reads
“I was built by the ones who came before
I was built by the ones who left.”

The traveler walks on and remembers
A night in the city. A girl who smelled of pomegranate.
A single candle extinguished by an open window.
Sweat. Heat. A broken kiss. A rasped goodbye.

Maybe he was the statue alone in the dunes.
But the traveler realized
No, I am the one who desecrated it.

The first question is “What are you”?
Well, I’m not a vampire in Twilight or a fairy in True Blood
So when I tell you that I’m biracial, why do you act so surprised?
I know you thought I was Hispanic or Filipino or Samoan, but I’m none of those things.
Too black to eat mayo, too white to say the n word.
Stuck between two extremes in your confused eyes.

Is it so hard to believe in 2018 America that the races may mix?
That a Nubian queen could be swept off her feet by a nerdy white guy from Brooklyn?
Maybe for you, but I am an abomination of love.
I can only exist as I am at this point in America’s history.

I may listen to the Beach Boys, but I bang with Kung Fu Kenny.
I am sorry that when you see me, I can’t fit into the boxes that you have used to build a cardboard fort around your expectations.
I read that humans will always stereotype because our brains have an inherent need to compartmentalize and categorize.
Stereotyping is hardwired into our neurons, welded to our amygdala with the unbreakable bond of biology.

So when you see me, actually try to see me.
Don’t see my skin color and try to figure out where I fit in in your worldview.
Notice the way I look down at the sidewalk with the intensity of a child looking at their mother’s face for the first time.
Notice how my hands move as they trace the paths of the music racing through my earbuds.
Notice that even though I won’t look at you until you speak to me, I register your presence with apprehension and a small flare of hope.

Maybe this time, I won’t be a file folder put into the drawer titled “to be determined at a later date”.
Maybe that drawer won’t shut and that handle won’t get dusty.
Maybe this time, we can relate on a level more than surface and a level less than love.
But I doubt it.

You are just my reflection, I can see it in your eyes.
Every simple movement ripples your disguise.
Your mouth is still and silent like empty coma cries.
Until I fill you with my thoughts then you come alive.

You speak right when I do, I hear my voice in stereo sound.
There are two outputs, your mouth brings mine around.
I try to say, it doesn’t matter. We are both walking on the same ground.
We are both smiling. We are both wearing the same exact frown.

So we are the same, I come to realize. Our hearts beat in time.
Our eyes line up. Our fingers fit. Our lyrics flow in an endless rhyme.
Our reflections are nothing more than mist blown away by dust.
Chalk marks on a piece of slate erased by our rising lust.

You are just my reflection, I can see it in your eyes.
Every simple movement ripples your disguise.
But I am your reflection too, now I know that’s true
So grab my hand and smile as I fall into you