Palm Sunday

Praise him with Psalms

Lay the street with palms

Prophecy fulfilled, the triumphant entry

Gracious, loving, unexpected

In rides Jesus- King

everything that makes me round

i can not be easily organized into hashtags or labels on cardboard boxes

i am am not the square, straight and even, check the boxes that apply

i am curves, goosebumps, stubbed toes, parabolas like roller coasters of emotion

stacks of books, thick socks, chapped lips, dogged eared magazine articles and bookmarked websites

i am built on the skins that i shed, reinvented myself on the stars of tomorrows and yesterdays

sliding into clean sheets, bouncing up at alarms, hot water runs down me in spirals

memories tied to songs, bones mended from brokenness, hips where my sister sits as i

wrap one arm around her, wrap two arms around myself, in self-love not self containment

because i 

                cannot

                           be 

                               contained

i am the fireworks i used to fear i am sunshine and oxygen converted

to carbon dioxide pumping blood, a million cells, fears and tickled taste buds, perked ears, messy hair 

save your boxes i will not fit. 

who are you

sixteen point four two years and i still don't know

know i am five feet seven inches of layers of experience 

and skin

skin and it's regenerated approximately two hundred and twenty two times

times which are fraction of how often i've changed my mind

mind and it's learning what to save and what to spend

spend and when to break and when to bend

bend when i am daughter, sister, writer, friend

-

this poem has been temporarily removed

Palms

You can not go on with clenched fists

The only thing you will gain is 

Nail marks in your palms 

And sore muscles

You must learn to let go 

And learn that there are others whose hands can fill the empty spots in you own

You must push on but 

It need not be alone 

The clenched fists await the bruises 

And wait for the fight to start

Open hands are quick to welcome, 

The beginning of an open heart