the astonishing color of after

she twisted her hair around her finger

strands of blue faded to the color of broken sea glass

the sun buttering the windows

the taste of the oolong tea is colored by the smell of smoke- salty wisps

the sky had turned electric

and the sun was cutting stripes across his face

giving him a mask made of light

butterscotch smear and the faint wash of carnelian

moon-cold floor

colors invert

crumbled to silty ash

tessellated.

ribbons of black smoke

purple-grey seeps into the sky

stained in charcoal

umber of dusk

crunchy pieces of autumn sprinkled across the lawn

the sky is a velvety indigo with the hint of dark silvery clouds

my mother once told me: the clouds you see at night hold promises.

buttery soft sleep

the morning light pale and water and shattered. broken into a million pieces.

black, spreading, fissuring

she burns like a star.

Adaptation of a poem from The Lifting Dress by Lauren Berry

Of all the things I learned in Catholic school, the definition of the calorie was most believable. The calorie, they taught me,

as though it was an object that could be felt,

the calorie, the science teacher—a nun—said, with her hand resting on her hip and her elbow sticking out like a pointed needle, is a unit on energy. The amount of heat needed to raise one gram of water

by one degree. Heat. I thought, I knew it.

I knew there was a name to call this fever in my body, knew that what passed my lips was the cause of the sweats that would form around neck

while I was seated at the table.

At dinner, my fork would vibrate in my hand to the movement of my shaking knees, and the next day I would look down and see more breast, more thigh,

and the burning would intensify.

At the following meal I placed a mirror on the table and dropped my jaw, shoveling ice cubes into the back of my throat, and swallowing.

I left the frost on my tongue calm my senses.

The joy is in remembering,

the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.

This is the trap of having something to live for:

Everything else seems lifeless.

Love makes you want to rewrite the world.

You want to do everything in your power to make it possible,

endlessly possible.

But how can I make her see past the blur?

Quotes put togheter from my favorite book: Everyday by David Levithan