Growing pains

forbidden fruits

alien fingers skimming
down my rib cage
leaving tingles as hot
as fire across my skin.
this is always how it starts:
letting myself taste forbidden fruits
convincing myself their sourness
will eventually turn sweet.
the bitterness in my mouth
lingers a fraction too long
but i learn to yearn for the taste.
here i go again, making another god
out of a lover with frail bones
and i will cry when they
remind me they’re just human.

peace is for the ignorant

i sit in bed with cold pizza at my feet
watching my cat rise and fall
as he sleeps peacefully, i can’t help
but wonder about that type of tranquillity.

i can’t wait to see you, he texts me.

ditto, i say.

he tells me to sleep well
as if i can sleep at all
without somebody beside me
to distract me from the fact
that i am never at peace.

two different planets

i. when you held me in your arms for the first time, you
held on so tight (too tight), as if i would just slip
through your fingers if you eased up. i told you i am
not a quiet little thing that could vanish, i am big and
loud and chaotic, i could not go anywhere delicately.
you smiled, telling me that is the best part about me: i
am hard to ignore. months later you avoid my gaze at
parties as if my voice does not register in your world
any longer.

ii. at supper, we sit across from each other, you are
cutting your steak wrong, and i correct you; we bicker
like my parents did before i had two homes. i realized
then we are very different, too different to ever figure it
out. it is like we were born on separate planets and
there will always be distance between us. distance not
even the stars could shrink. you claim the French are
forthright, and i am too sensitive to ever be a writer in
Paris, your words are laced with so much venom i am
almost impressed. we don’t last much longer, and i
quickly forget what your arms feel like. sometime after i
have supper with another man, a few years older than
you, and he cuts his steak properly and reads the books
i suggest to him. he isn’t much, but he’s enough to
convince me that i won’t have to venture across planets
for every lover i have.

Poems excerpted from Sierra Madison Brown-Rodrigues’ book, Growing Pains. Buy it here.