Audrey Diggs
When you let yourself
bloom, the other flowers take notice,
and sometimes they’ll bloom with you.
And then you’ll decorate a wall
in rose petals and lilies,
vines encasing you like
arms around shoulders.
Sometimes, that doesn’t happen.
You bloom on morning ice, a bed of frost
and shrivel into a molted bud. But
that’s okay. At least, that’s what
the internet will tell you.
My therapist says life is inconsistent,
Nature is always twisting in on itself,
spiraling to mirror its helical makeup.
we are all little systems
of syntax and runtime errors,
infinite loops with no output.
Our insides betraying our outsides
in existential rebellion.
We’re all unpredictable.
I remember puking on someone’s shoes and
their smiling face after-the-fact. The “shit” and “what
the fuck” and “no” lost in pulled corners of the mouth.
I thought: maybe he smiles when he’s angry, like I do,
feelings lost in translation
when they reach the muscles. Inconsistence.
Maybe that’s what she means.