I am not naïve.
I learned this when a girl I know
Wrote about wings.
Like they were something you were born with.
When I write about wings
They are a pill you can take.
A test you can fail.
A train you can miss.
A boy you can love.
But this girl
Swoops in
On her homegrown wings
And tells me not to fly too close to the sun.
My wings are not made of wax.
They are made of the the skin of my teeth.
They are made of the casing on a bullet.
The nails in my coffin
That math problem
That i could never quite figure out
They are the reason I do not sleep.
Maybe I just haven't grown into them yet
But maybe I don't want to.
My head
Is already up high enough in the clouds
I don't need any arial assistance
And this hummingbird
Starts flitting around my barbed wire faith
Trying to teach me about my own flight
But I've always be more of a fighter
More likely to kick and scream
More likely to drag somebody by their hair if I have to
So maybe that's why flying
Was never really my style
Because I prefer something more real
Something tangible
Something that I can throw
When things go wrong.
Something I can blame
When my voice box gives up on me
Darling.
Please don't give up on me.
I am still learning.
Still growing.
But you have to let me do it on my own
Or it's never gonna get through my head
I have to fuck this up
Bad enough justify all the unquantified hate poems
I'm done with hate poems
They are the alcoholic's tequila
A gypsy caravan gone wrong
And tonight
I'm swerving off the tracks
//for that girl, the one from my math class//
