Lavender.

All I want is to give her lavender.

Well, I actually want her hand in mine and to hear my name from her lips: "Zoey".

And yet, here I stand on her doorstop, afraid to ring her bell.

We have been friends and neighbors forever and my heart races thinking about the only two possiblities. Dating or never hanging out again. There was NO way she talk to me again if she rejected me.

I found the smallest courage and raised my hand to the bell, only for her to open the door first.

She smiled. "Hi."

"Hi, Liz."

I don't have a gender.

To many people, that may seem like a strange thing to say.

"But you love dresses!"

"But you wear makeup and jewelry!"

"But you sew and cook and knit and clean and, and, and!

"You never seemed masculine at all!"

That's the thing.

I am not masculine.

I am not feminine.

I am a secret third thing.

I am

empathetic,

strange,

curious,

loving,

passionate,

divine.

Those all define me,

not my gender.

I may do feminine things,

enjoy dresses and makeup and jewelry,

enjoy cooking and sewing and knitting,

but

I also do masculine things,

enjoy suits, short hair, having a flat chest,

enjoy engineering, getting dirty, working with numbers.

Those do not show my gender

My gender does not exist

I exist

I am more than gender

Gender does not limit me,

define me,

relate to me,

or have any bearing on what I do.

Gender has no importance to me

And I can't feel it anyways

So why does it matter?

What matters is that I cook,

I knit,

I engineer,

I get dirty,

I sew,

I tangle with numbers

I love,

I am the caretaker and the taken care of

I am beyond gender

It does not matter to me anymore

I feel free.

I am full of love

for a boy or a girl or anything in between and around

choosy I am not

as

never loved

never will

for

a reason.

Am I here

or not

full of love

coming never, never, nevermore?

What a joke

not cosmic

a

very

tiny

one.

do you ever find comfort in your body / do you ever find yourself sinking. have you ever been tired so you curled up and its just as your head hits the make-shift pillow you've made of your arms that you realize you were made for this. do you ever think about how your face fits perfectly in the crook of your elbow. do you ever realize your hands were made for leaning against. because i do and i think and what i'm trying to say is i think evolution is a form of self-love because; what a thing, to change your very structure just to live a better life. what an idea, to rebuild bits of yourself for nothing other than your own personal comfort. my hair is soft and my voice trills. i remember joy easier than i remember what not to mix with bleach.

here's the thing- i've heard all the poems about how we were made to fit into one another, how bodies can mold together like clay. i guess i never thought about it being for myself. i guess when i looked down at my hands i never considered the reasoning behind the swirls of my fingers being different from everyone else's. i guess i never considered the consequences of evolution, the implications of changing for your own survival- i guess i never realized it was all for my survival. all for me and myself and the ten minutes i spend looking at the sun rise in the morning. i guess i never thought about being created for me. fitting into myself like keys on a keyboard.

i guess i never thought about- i'm alive to live for myself. do you ever find comfort in your own body and realize it's always been about something you cannot possibly begin to imagine communicating with loving you. that its always been about you. i think self-love is something like an instinct

most of the rocks are smoother than you think. at least here by the river. where the main force acting on them is abrasion. these rocks are hard, these rocks are dense.

throw the rocks at someone, and it will injure,

throw it at a window, and it will break.

the potential of fuckery is multitudinous.

yet, recall, that most of the rocks are smooth.

far away, near a faultline, or high in the mountains, rocks get more troublsome. slate, and flint and basalt, their break and shatter violently, over time. even the limestone bears the memories of collisions and calamities, in jagged chronicle.

i would not recommend walking barefoot, tempting the outcropping to bite.

i shall not argue, it is true enough that from the right perspective, or the precise resolution, the smoothest of surfaces, is actually, cracked and distorted. it can also be said, that the most jagged of rocks, when held in aggregate, is just as shapley.

i have sat on many rocks. and some were a pleasurable massage, and some were a torture to endure. sitting is the true test of things: Piercing harshness or absorption of the outer membranes.

thought is a desire to find a place to sit. a perch that shall fit or conform to reality, even if this reality is threatning.

be sure that in your thought, you don't sit upon a sharp, spike of a rock.

we came to be

formed by the hands of a cruel god

a narcissist shaping us to his will.

we disobeyed,

fled from the oppression of the suffocating sky.

how do we exist?

when we escaped the narcissist

how did we keep him at bay?

how do you pacify

the universe?

with existential dread

haunting our paragraphs and

breaking the lead of our pencils,

and a society built on wisps of ideas

rather than solid ground

how can we walk through our ranks

without falling through the clouds

that hold us up?

we came to be

formed by the hands of a cruel god,

shaped in his image

our psyches tainted by his narcissism

for all eternity.

and we only survive because we disobeyed

otherwise we'd surely drown

in conformity.

We fear to die.

Though we torment

in the futile squabbles

of being human

And grow bored

of what was once

seen as wonder.

A thousand years

Makes mole hills

Out of mountains

And yet

from the beginning of time

The human spirit

thrived

and survived

with food and fire

and dance and song

And that one flicker

of passion remains

even in the most listless soul

The capacity for creativity

is beautiful

and limitless

And curiosity

built cities and machines

and medicine and bombs

the human mind

is capable of great evil

and great kindness

But that curiosity

Is the greatest monster

and greatest victor of all

It lives in all of us

The deep craving

for understanding

There's still so much

we don't know.

And until all

that exists in the universe

is known to us

We will go on

Because we must

know the why

of our being

So we stand on the precipice

bored and terrified

filled with derealization

But we do not jump.

Despite the terror

of being alive

We more so fear to die.