Paper Bullets

He sits crumpled like a discarded piece of paper

Never took the time to unfold himself

Ink-slashed and wrinkled

He think he’s the mistake – thrown away on purpose

I want to smooth him out – show him that mistakes are things you are learn from

And I need him to teach me

Teach me how to translate my scars into art

Teach how to love through the pain

Teach me how to speak beauty and nothing else

I know he knows how

But he thinks he’s the mistake

The soldier who speaks the language of warfare

Can translate bone into armor into boom

The soldier who dreams in sirens and blood and sweat and steel

The soldier who saw the color of one too many bloodtypes

The soldier who can’t shake the sand from his hair

The soldier who can’t quite tie his boot laces into bows anymore

The man who let that war break him

He’s crying – like men aren’t supposed to

I want to hold him

But couch cushions become canyons in silence

I don’t think I can reach him

I want to tell him:

Come – let me unfold you

You can stand in the cave of ribs and scream out all your self-hatred

I promise to only echo back love

I know your memories bleed into nightmares every time you blink

But go ahead, dare to close your eyes

Only if you promise to open them again

I don’t know how to help you

I don’t know how to explain what safety is

You know better than I do that every gun has one

Instead, I stay quiet

He throws himself at me

Paper – balled tight enough – looks a lot like a bullet

For Cheeks, (who committed suicide after years of homophobic bullying)

Love, you were fistfuls of inconsistencies

Chiseled-chest man in ruffles and lace

Rope-veined arms and a honey voice

Beautiful – like the tender snap of bone

Boy, you loved like lightning strike

A peculiar kind of luck to be touched by you

The moment you struck your lover – you were all there ever was

They feared you – frightened by then way your calloused hands found those of your lover

Detested your stubble-chinned kisses

They hurled insults at the flamboyance of your limp wrists

Spat ugly words at the way you moved

You never walked – you danced to the beat of your internal metronome

A surreal hip-level thing

Deemed you faggot for your subtle lisp

They didn’t realize your tongue beat against your lips with the rhythm of the indigenous brilliance your skin proclaimed

You were proud of you changua-soaked roots

Always smelled of sancocho y tu abuela’s heavy bosoms

I’d sometimes watch as you tears carved caverns into her chest

She’d whisper chocuano litanies into your unruly curls

Remind you that a man is a man no matter how he loves

Your mother laced her rosary beads with shame

Despised how you craved the perfect curve of your lover’s spine

The men – they railed

Took you on joyrides

Vowed to make you into a man by raping you with antediluvian truth from a God they only remembered during mass

Boy, a better friend would’ve done more

Given more than empty death threats and fuck yous

You clever contradiction

Had me convinced the dignity of your smile outweighed your ever-flowing tears

Thought you loved biting their hostility across your lover’s back

A better friend would have known better

If I knew then, what I know now

I’d lace your track marks with this poem

Filling your veins better than any needle ever could

I wish my love could’ve struck you

Wish that bullet never blessed your skull

Wish you never knew the tender sound of metal kissing bone

Boy – you could’ve taught them all how to be men

By Jade Fields

Mommy’s Little Girl

“Did you hear me, Jade?” “Are you listening?”

I do not answer

I wonder if she’s ever marveled at the beauty of silence

Snuggled into the warmth of noiselessness

Let the quiet envelope her

I wonder if the strength it takes to swallow syllables ever rendered her still

She speaks in nails scraped across chalkboards

In metal grinding against enamel

Her voice is sharper than the blades I drag across my own skin

I wonder if she notices the bleeding

I tell people I don’t cry much

Its because I’ve got unreliable tearducts – I use my veins instead

I once tried to see how much blood my bathtub could hold

When she asked me why I did it

I told her, “I sometimes cry too much. Bet you didn’t even hear me.”

“Do you realize how much I do for you?”

I stay silent

My existence is proof of her of sacrifice

She tiptoed around death to birth me

Stretched her body until it lost its elasticity

Only to have a man who never learned to love mark me with his features

Its hard to tell her, “Thank you”

She’s given me a mountain of good schools and strength

Those words just seem silly in comparison

Let me offer my silence as gratitude

In the only ample I have

Just take it

“Do you really hate your mother this much?”

Quiet

I love her like soaked sheets on a Thursday morning after a night of fighting a demon who knaws at my silence with razorblade teeth

I wake up screaming like hatred and I call that demon mother

She tries to love me into submission

Makes sure I and anyone she can find to listen knows that I lace my shoes with mistakes and apologies

Tells the world I’m a walking fuckup who offers silly sorry’s for  excuses

And then wonders why I’m always tongue-tied

I love her so dizzy it spins like hatred

I don’t mind that her minds carve my spine into an ampersand

At least she’s still speaking to me

I don’t say much – I just keep bleeding

And I wonder if she realizes how gorgeous my silence is

By speaking, I’d have to bring her into my ugly

She doesn’t know that I’ve inked my skin as a permanent reminder that I’m human

Doesn’t know that I find peace in the curves of another woman’s body

Doesn’t know that I sometimes let my legs spread themselves for whoever vows to fuck without asking questions

Doesn’t know that I masturbate until my legs cramp

Conveniently forgot that my very first lesson in loving was scraped kneecaps and learning how to swallow

I don’t say much

Just give her my big, pretty, quiet lie

“Little girl, did you hear me?”

“Yes Mommy.  I always do.”

by Jade Fields

Untitled

Woman – you are not pretty

Something so simplistic – no matter how you stretch it – wouldn’t quite fit your frame

You are creation

Someone a lot kinder than most people make him out to be dreamed of creating something of worth

He burrowed into the roots of his ribcage and shaped you – breathed into you

Woman – you are breathtaking

There is grace in the way your teeth dance with your lips

He created the smile to fit your cheeks

There are hummingbirds nestled beneath your breastplate

You breathe melody

Words spill from your mouth like notes – filling the air around you with music

Woman – you speak symphonies

You laugh like rapture – as if the Lord has kissed your throat

Pretty does not begin to describe you

Woman – we were raised with razorblade eyes

Groomed to cut down our sisters

Slice through our differences

Vying for attention from fools who will call us silly things – like pretty

Then think we are crazy for bleeding with the moon

But woman we are more alike than you think

Don’t hide your flint marks

I, too, have been taken with people who are taken with sparks

Who burn you because they find you conveniently flammable

And then complain of second-hand inhalation

Woman – you are more than smoking

I am amazed at how you rise elegantly

Dusting the ashes from your brow

The phoenix was fashioned after you

Know that someone holier than we can fathom planted pieces of himself into your soul

Making your skin into a sieve – until every pore is spilling with the light of the Lord

I know that some days your heartbeat glows too bright for your chest

And some days you feel to point of tearing

And dream to the point of believing

I, too, dream of finding someone who will fall in love with the religion of my mouth

And love me until the moon loses its footing in the sky

Don’t squeeze your soul into the narrow spaces of fear

Woman – you are too brilliant for that

Let it breathe – like your beauty

Know that your intellect is boundless

Your strength is astounding

You are creation

And woman – you are so much more than pretty

By Jade Fields

Conversations We’ll Never Have

Part I

Mother

I’m sorry I almost killed you – I didn’t mean to be so big when I was born

I’m sorry I begged for G.I. Joe and never thanked you for Barbie

I’m sorry I always smelled like playground and secrets

I’m sorry you feel you have to love me into submission

I’m sorry I can only love you recklessly

I’m sorry I only call you when I need money

I’m sorry I answer when you need attention

I’m sorry I don’t thank you enough for sacrifice and good schools and your chin and your strength

I’m sorry that I’d rather you see the tattoos than the scars they cover

I’m sorry that when you look at me you see the night you made the biggest mistake of your life

I’m sorry his genes are so strong

I’m sorry that when you taught me to love everyone I took that shit seriously

I’m sorry I kiss girls

I’m sorry I love like abomination

I’m sorry you sometimes hate me

I’m sorry I sometimes hate you too

I’m sorry I’m all twitches and stutters in your presence

I’m sorry you sometimes love with your fist

I’m sorry I almost struck back that time

I’m sorry I let my feelings bleed onto my clothes

I know how much you hate it when I leave a stain

I’m sorry that brick split that boy’s forehead

I’m sorry I never told you that brick payback for rape

I’m sorry I’ve yet to fully understand my curves

I’m sorry you don’t always recognize the girl you raised

I’m sorry I almost killed you

Part II

Father

I’m sorry its hard to look at me sometimes – I hate mirrors too

I’m sorry you never realized how strong your genes are

I’m sorry you feel trapped in the scraped chalkboard of her nagging

I’m sorry expected child support to mean more than your paycheck

I’m sorry I missed Father’s Day

I’m sorry I let Hallmark say all the things I don’t feel

I’m sorry I thanked you for our afterschool adventures

I’m sorry I smelled like playground and secrets

I’m sorry I never told you about my razor blade tongue

I’m sorry I cut you every time we speak

I’m sorry you caught me talking to myself

I’m sorry I was your biggest mistake

I’m sorry I never call you Daddy

A boy with hollow eyes, sharp words and a busted forehead told me to call him that first

I’m sorry I only love you recklessly

I’m sorry I don’t ever call

I’m sorry you’re so hard to look at

Part III

Z

I’m sorry my devotion never filled your eyes

I’m sorry my screams never dulled your words

I’m sorry that brick only split open your face

I’m sorry I always smelled like playgrounds and secrets

I’m sorry I bled so much – I’ve got my father’s veins

I’m sorry I didn’t know his genes were so strong

I’m sorry I told our story – decided to bleed it out in notebooks

I’m sorry every poem is about you

I’m sorry you mistook my splintering for tearing

I’m sorry I didn’t break

I’m sorry I only loved you like flailing fists – reckless

I’m sorry I didn’t break

I’m sorry I never to got meet her but I would’ve named her Hope

I’m sorry I still feel her ghost in my womb

I’m sorry I never got to see if her eyes were as hollow as yours

I’m sorry you ripped out our seed with your wire hanger rage

I’m sorry its taken me this long to forgive you

I’m sorry I can’t hate you because I didn’t break

Part IV

To Whoever Dares To Love Me

I am an awkward girl who speak fluent apology

I will beg for pardon before I even know your name

I’ve grown blind from sharp words and sharper tongues

Let me read your actions like Braille

I won’t tell you anything – learn to read my veins

They are thick – like my father’s

I can’t believe how strong his genes are

When you see me dreaming of flailing fist and bloody bricks – flaying sheets and howling about hollowed-eyed boys and girls I shouldn’t want to kiss

Just hold me

I’ll bandage your hands once they start to bleed from caressing my rough edges

I’ll kiss a novel into your neck without saying a single word

Without knowing, I’ll let breach my walls

I’ll beg you not to save me but I’ll pray that you try

I’ll smother you with my need

And I’ll love you – recklessly – fully

Till my heart spills onto my sleeve – I’ll stain you

When you offer me your love, I will take it and your heart and your lungs and your time

Then I’ll apologize for bingeing

Offer my atonement in sharp-stuttered purges

I’ll be sorry for leading you into into the shards of my body

Sorry that all my wire hangers bleed Hope

Sorry that I’ll feel trapped like chalk beneath your nails

Sorry that I’ll leave flailing in search of playground and sharp secrets

I’m sorry that I’ll never tell you this

 

I Hate Bathrooms

I rolled off your tongue

Tickled my not so secret spot just as my toes curled with the kind of epiphany that’s flesh-visceral

The kind that only tongue tickling not so secret spot can trigger

“I love you,” you said

And all I could think of was the scratches on your wedding band

Beat up from scraping toilet bowls and bathroom tiles

The bathroom had become your closet – that’s where I first saw you

When I met you, you were crossing white lines

Rolling dollar bills into telescopes to see a God you knew hated you because secretly you’d rather kiss soft lips than lick hard dicks

And my first thought was, “My God, who knew beauty could be so pathetic?”

You were rambling, offering excuses to justify your habit

Eyes pleading that I not judge you, and I couldn’t

Because I like to cross those lines too

Not to see I God I was raised to believe in but rather to forget all the shit he let happen when his attention was focused elsewhere

I should have known this would be a problem when this habit became foreplay

But at the time, there was mutual need

I needed to support a habit

Its not that I’m an addict – I just like the way it smells

You needed an body upon whom you could release all your secret sexual frustration

I needed to be needed and you needed me

You needed an outlet for your misery

Because they forced you into the emblem of hetero-normalcy – the holiest of unions

But for you the sanctity of mar meant learning how to be a really good roommate

And you couldn’t even do that – pathetic

But you – you wore your pathetic like lingerie

I should’ve known this was a problem when I started thinking that pathetic was sexy

You’re shallow – so stop asking me questions that are deeper than your entire existence

Don’t ask me why I shudder every time we fuck

Why I breathe staccato melody

Why my ribcage shakes like wind chimes

Don’t ask me to explain the songs that my scars sing

I’m a fucking symphony – and you’re a Top 40s kind of girl

So don’t think you can fathom my movements

How funny – you thought your fist to be wrecking ball

Thought you could break through my stonewall heart

How sad – you thought your tears were a hurricane

But you couldn’t even cry me a swimming pool and its hard to drown in the shallow end

It was supposed to be just sex but its never just sex

I thought your eagerness meant horny

You mistook my willingness for intimacy – thought my silence meant I cared

Sex isn’t always the best language to speak in

But we – we are so eloquent – fluent in the curves of each other’s bodies

I know I didn’t say much but the one time I actually used to my words I thought I made myself clear

I told you not to love me

Because loving me is a full-time commitment and you’re already in one

I’m a handful and a half and your hands are already heavy from the rock he put on your finger

He’s your husband – you’re his angel

I know that dented halo feels a lot more like shackles

But if you didn’t want to do it you shouldn’t have said “I do” but you did

You said he took your breath away the day he married you

But you traded your lungs for acceptance and a lie

You are living pretense – snorting white lies off of bathroom floors and calling it breathing

I only lusted for you – it was only flesh-cravings

But your body was like an infection

My cure – fingers that I know still remember what feels good

There was never an “us” only a “this”

This is supporting an old habit and I’ve still got hope it’ll die

This started out as a problem

Our telescopes were never even pointed in the same direction

We were never looking for the same thing

So go ahead, stay in your closet

But next time, lock the fucking bathroom door!

Beauty

There are certain things I shouldn’t find beautiful

Like her honeysuckle shoulder blades

They seem to bloom every time she stretches

But finding beauty in the best is wrong

Because girl + girl = sin

And I should only wish holy if I want God to keep talking to me

Wish man inside woman; wish manhood inside woman-mouth

There are certain things I will never find beautiful

Like the way your pants bulge every time I lick my lips

You remember how playful my tongue is

You never wondered how it gave life to your senses while the rest of my body plays dead

It’s ‘cause I learned to die young

Death was my playmate for every date between his thighs

Pelvis kissing sternum kissing man kissing me

It didn’t hurt as much when I learned to stop breathing

It was easier when I just didn’t move

Man inside girl will never be pretty

There are certain things that are not beautiful

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder

That’s why I hate mirrors

My eyes can’t seem to hold the weight of my ugly

He held me sometimes

With his hands

With his words

Told me I could only dream pretty

I did – and it always looked like death

I have always thought death was beautiful

I have always found like to be a bit too hideous

Maybe that’s why I fuck so much

I’m awfully good at playing dead

Learned to play with any and everyone

I sometimes act childish

Maybe its ‘cause I heard childhood was supposed to be pretty

Or maybe that when I first felt gorgeous – when I first felt death

Can you see my gravestone heart?

See how its weathered from the tears I won’t let myself cry?

I heard beauty is sunshine through rainfall

I wish I could let my smile shine as my tears fall

Beauty, catch me in your puddle

Childhood was never rain-running and puddle-jumping

The splash would have been too gorgeous

Beauty, catch me in your puddle

It was always like a prayer

Beauty drown me – ripples distort my ugly

Swell over me like death

To be alive is to be ugly

And I just want to be beautiful

Love Letter

I can’t begin this with “Dear” because you like to rape open the pretty

Penetrate the innocence of sincerity

Turning words like that into nothing more than 4-letter stab wounds

“Fuck you, you fucking slut!”

Funny how those become interchangeable with the 4 letters my mother named me

Jade – which you said meant dumb

Which in turn meant dirt

Too low to love – but low enough to fuck

Legs spread like slut – but I bled like girl

I spoke pain way too soon

You spoke thesaurus because it was always synonymous to love

You ran my life like a wordsmith

And I clung to every syllable like a popsicle stick

Sometimes nothing is stronger the grip of a child

You told me you’d hold me daughter

Give me all the love my father couldn’t muster

But no daughter should ever know what her daddy tastes like

I sucked you popsicle bone dry – and you called it love

Sometimes life is just child’s play

You always had a way with words

Your tongue was a knife dipped in sugar

And I had never bled so sweetly before you

Your love costs me way too much blood

But I craved you because you were all the love I knew

I still crave you sometimes – like a junkie craves needles

I still feel your words swimming in my veins

Maybe that’s why I cut them open

Maybe I miss seeing you every time I bleed

Maybe I just want you out of me

You carved fault lines into my dreams – so I’m gonna need you to stop shaking me

No nights spent trembling, tangled, tits twisted, sheets soaked with the smell of you

I hate that your aroma lingers in my nightmares

I wish you scent wasn’t so familiar because I always end up craving what I’ve grown accustomed to

I got used to the groping multiplied by heavy moans divided by every time you played arson

I’ve never been one for math but 3117

That’s how many time you burned my soul to ashes

But I’m learning to play phoenix

I bet you didn’t think I could breathe through cinder

Lungs black and smoky – but still expanding

Still pumping the air I need to proclaim my story

The story no one wants to hear but my soul needs to tell

Your tongue carved silence into my flesh

But I heal with every word I write

The smoke is clearing

Watch me as my wings unfurl – I’ve been practicing my take-off

You wordsmith – your voice is growing faint

Everyone eventually throws the popsicle stick away

I no longer answer to dumb, dirt, or slut

Call me by the 4-letters my mother forgets she named me

Sincerely Resilient,

Jade

Letter to God

I’ve spent my life learning your names yet I don’t know what to call you

What do you call someone with so many different names?

El Shadih – Elohim – Yahweh – Jehovah

These just conjure images of people who perform holy when they shout gibberish at you –

Claiming to have caught your spirit

How do you catch the intangible?

I must’ve missed that Sunday school lesson – too busy trying to remember your name from the week before

They call you Our Father

But if you’re anything like the man who fucked my mother – I can only call you pathetic

Sometimes present – like a rainbow after rainfall that I can only glimpse if I’m standing in the right light

Always distant – like I love yous from a man who shares my bone structure

Jehovah Jirah, a provider – when convenient

I guess the name Daddy fits

Its crazy how natural blasphemy is

Its easier to damn you than to praise you

I can curse you quicker than I can ever say I needed you

Goddammit I needed you once

I come before you – less humble than I should be ‘cause I angry

You said you’d never leave me nor forsake me

But I’ve spent so much time feeling lonely

I used the words you gave me and prayed eloquently

Knees bent at the perfect angle of righteousness

Fingers laced with the words I digested every Sunday from a preacher who was further away from holy than I could ever be

Where were you?

Were you angry?

Did you hate me?

Forgive me for praising them like idols

I put them before you because they answered me quicker

Their ultimate sacrifice was their attention

Every rape became a blessing

Every beating – an answered prayer

They were evil cloaked beautifully in holiness

Devils quoting scriptures for their purpose ‘cause its so easy to play holy

Where were you?

I searched for you – in the sanctity of scriptures I could recite robotic

In the holiness of steeples and stained glass

In the familiarity of devotions my soul stopped believing in long before my mind did

But now – I no longer believe in the eloquence of performance

So here I am – as I am

Profane and skeptical ‘cause that’s all I know how to be

On my knees because it hurts too much to stand

Hands gripping each other – trying to stop the shaking

Head hanging ‘cause I’m too ashamed to look at you

I come before you broken – simply praying mend me

See how my tears – heavy with memories too painful to claim – carve space in my cheeks for my smile to go

Mend me

See how it hides in my throats – strangled by hands I can still feel sometimes

Mend me

See how I breathe death so desperately under the weight of a life I was  told I deserved

Mend me

See how I bleed myself dry just so I can feel loved

Mend me

I should stop looking for you in religion and start looking in relations

Because I realized I hear you most in the melody of my favorite song

How the notes breathe movement into the static of pieces of my soul

I see you most in the scars on my own skin

How each one tells a story of resilience

I now understand why His wounds were so beautiful

I feel you most in the embraces from people you placed in my life to show me that love doesn’t have to bleed so much

Mend me

So what do I call you?

I refuse to use names I will never understand

Perform in tongues to hide insecurities – or indifferences

God – just seems too distant sometimes

Father is reserved for the fool who shares my blood type

What do I call you?

You, who sees me despite myself?

You, who loves me beyond myself?

You, who keeps me in spite of myself?

You, who accepts me as I am – obscene and doubtful?

You, who holds me shattered and claims me whole?

Friend – I thank you for mending

Sincerely,

Yours

Metamorphosis

you made me nothing more than blackened knees and secrets
an empty shell of what I could’ve been
because you carved out my innocence with love
the kind of love that bangs up the creaking headboards of unfamiliar beds under the silhouettes of familiar secrets
you were my master and I was your faithful lover
I remember the way your anger licked the trajectory of my limbs
and your knuckles kissed the curvature of my spine
the imprint of your fingers on my neck was the closest I’ve ever felt to security
you made me nothing more than broken bones and silence
a hollow shell of what I could’ve been
because you carved out my innocence with brilliance
the kind of brilliance that penetrate the fragile soul of a naive little girl whose loneliness is palpable
you were the artist and I was your masterpiece
I can still feel the way your hands sketched gashes across my skin
and the sting of your palms kiss painted the sweetest agony across my face
you made me nothing more than swollen eyes and solitude
a vacant shell of what I could’ve been
because you carved out my innocence with language
the kind of language the embraces the spirit while shattering dreams with painful affirmations
you were the voice and I was the soul
I can recall how your words spoke doubt into my existence
your mouth declared me less than human
the impact of your voice on my mind leaked bloody from my ears
I am all knees blackened by silence, eyes swollen with secrets, bones broken by solitude
a shell waiting to be filled with the plentitude of my potential
because my innocence had been replaced with painful wisdom
the kind of wisdom that’s fostered by the dreams that rise from the silence of my familiar bed
the kind of wisdom that penetrates the brilliance of my soul
the kind of wisdom that becomes the language of my story
I am the master of my own voice – the artist
breathing life into my scars
which have beautifully created the masterpieces of my life.