Seventeen

Tonight 

I washed off seventeen

Crumbled in the haze of apologies

scrubbing off the soot of insecurity

I found out my scars were temporary tattoos

Tonight 
I held a cat against my chest as I walked through TSA

Replaced my makeup with a

Sports bra and  lesbian haircut

and radioactivated the sun with the solar systems
 crawling out of my smile

Tonight 
I won't discover my beauty

in a dictionary or a magazine

but G-d refused to show Moses his face

to remind him the holiest is yet to be seen

And tonight I am holy

Tonight I compared myself to G-d

With the first poem that is not about

hating myself

Or surviving myself

Or swallowing myself

Tonight 
I am not a setting sun 
begging for another thirty pages

I am an Alaskan summer

the first southern fried northern light

Tonight 
I compared myself to G-d

Because I stole some wind

Crafted its flares into a razor

And shaved off all this seventeen

All this nervous sinkhole of apologies

All this long hair 
because he said 
he would sleep with me that way

All this silence 
because he said 
he could sleep better that way

All this hating other girls who were like me

Who didn’t acquire 
the taste for wordlessmess faster 

than the ability to sip warm beer

Tonight I compared myself to G-d

Because when she was seventeen
she probably sipped warm beer
at parties where no moonlight spoke to her

She probably got lost in all that darkness

And in all that eternity

When she realized 
all it takes is a hug 
in a crowded terminal

When mom cries she’s proud of you

To forgive yourself 
for all the people you’ve been

Tonight,

When you reconstruct destiny

Using chewed pencils 
and knee-high converse

You'll shudder as you contact memories 
and blooming tomorrows

When little you is large enough

To be everything 
they told you not to be

Remember, seventeen bellyflopped out teardrops of opportunity

It doesn’t matter how it ended up in your bloodstream

It is 92% percent water

And we are 97% clean

You will finger dust all the souls napping in your skin

At the diving board of 21

Your breath still bathes in rose petals

You will become become your own prophet
and drunk text the lightning