it’s just a split lip december

a bull’s eye of a birth month

all wide eyed and waning

turning twenty-one felt nothing

like shedding skin and everything

like the crack of a honey comb

I fell in love with a boy

and choked on the full moon

and tumbled all the way

through the rush of the

deep and tangled blue

I thought I’d taste wild berries

or summer

or god

I thought it’d last

or settle like fog

I thought I’d learn from bruised knees

or the sprint of spring

but it’s 10 months later and I’m out on the other side

teething

on paper thin perceptions of being

still backlit and burning

still burgeoning on the lives I’ve lived

and days I’ve lost

and tongues twisted on the “coming home”

of everything and everything and

everything not meant for me

with two hands I hold my craters

and blame the way I shake on my

grandma’s mother’s grandma paulina

and her husband’s ink I take

for all the poems,

all the shouting I do about my heart

all the sea glass I couldn’t keep

I’m waist deep and wading

I’m here and look,

I’m going to talk about growing up

until the day I die

but boy,

does it feel like losing