Poetry by Madeira Alba

                  ​ ricky shore CC



​Dear Stranger
​
You look so sweet there 
a little boy asleep
surrounded by the things you love most
the needle in your arm 
like the blanket I keep on my bed
to remind of a time before knowing

You don't know me but
the desire to disappear flourishes in us both, love
vines of deep despair creep from your open veins and wander their way
up my leg

telling me pity would just be hypocrisy 
I stare for a while
through the window 
into your subconscious
wondering how I could ever save you
if the glass in my hand
looks just like that spoon on your dash

My knuckles find the glass and knock
inviting myself in
your eyelashes flutter 
waving me away
begging me not to interrupt oblivion
and the only thing I can think to say is..."are you okay?"
but we both know the answers lies somewhere between
save me and fuck you

I couldn't take my eyes off of you
I wanted to watch you heal all of the wounds
I kept reopening
but instead I watched you turn your key in the ignition
If it feels ok, can I hold your hand? 
I want to tell you a story about
Coming Home
You cried the first time you kissed a boy, remember?
And you used those tears to clean the mirror
that only ever reflected a stranger
the twisted body
had stolen your features and called them her own
but the scrubbing never made her anymore you
and eventually she cried too

If it feels safe, can you close your eyes?
Imagine waking up 
In a room where you've locked the closet door
and swallowed the key
because you don't need to keep covering up
Your body is so plastered with art
that you feel like a gallery of your own growth
You no longer need to slice yourself open
to climb out of your skin
You spend that energy carefully licking your wounds
because you know -now- that your job is to heal
Not shatter
You are the only ointment that can soothe those deep burns
Never again will you let greedy fingertips brand you
You've learned to let the luminescence of your eyes
Serve as a warning
That you survived and you aren't afraid anymore
​
You walk past the full length mirror
without a second glance
because you painted over the glass with the 
sweet salt water that flooded from you
when you saw your own face for the first time





Reverse Bucket List 

Golden Shovel with a line from “Live Live Live” by Andrea Gibson

Today I trim a leaf off the first plant I 
didn’t let suffocate in the darkness. I have 

baptised the sheets on this mattress that never 
remembered a thing past my stuck silhouette. I trusted 
​
My limbs to climb a wall without anyone
Offering the rope as a reward. With 

Plush soft sun at my back, I walk into the 
Ocean without the hope of being pulled 

Into cloying relief of the current. My back 
Is a constellation of salt and sand when I bow 

With restored respect at the foot of 
the cliff I used to imagine my 

poorly wired storm of a spine
might hurtle off, with the 

Stiff necked speed of every way 
I’d tried to stay. Of course, I 

know a cheated death is not to be trusted. 
Time is as relentless as pain for the ones 

who hid blades under their pillows. We who 
Have been begging since birth for god to come

steal our burdensome breath before we come undone. 
We were the kids who never had the innocence to look at 

Strangers and call them family. We are the 
bodies that never had a breath come easy. Our throat

rubbed raw just from screaming 
at the sky. It is only for 

my sacred kin and the psych ward white of their 
knuckles that I have tamed these deadly im-pulses.

I will never stop offering my palms to 
people who could never find 

the instinct to persist. Today I am the 
Proof that if every heartbeat feels like a fight 

It will always be worth it to 
Force it to pound.

​

Madeira (they/them) is an exquisitely sensitive queer poet and sober alcoholic living in Santa Cruz CA. These are their first published poems and they are delighted to be contributing them to AHC.

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