To Whom It Definitely Concerns,

Every Time I Ever Said I Want to Die

Instead of Depression

What Love Is

Homesick: a Plea for Our Planet

The Day Prince Died

My Gender Is the Undoing of Gender

Spelling Bee Without Stinger

The Night Shift

Love Me to Life

Love Letter to the Tick that Got Me Sick

After the Break-Up, Our Tandem Bike Speaks:

Neighbors

Note to the Stranger Six Feet Away:

Good Grief

The Call, Option 1

The Call, Option 2

What Can’t Be Taken

The Test of Time

Aliens Explain Why They Are Visiting Earth

Constellations Rearrange Themselves into a Protest Sign

Climate Change

Wellness Check

My Girlfriend’s Karaoke Song

What You Wish You’d Said to the High School Guidance Counselor

What Sucks About the Afterlife

How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best

Life Sentence

Not Alone

How I Became a Poet

See This Through

The Last Hours

Acknowledgements

About the Author

YOU BETTER BE

LIGHTNING

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AFTER SETTING THE WORLD RECORD IN GOOSEBUMPS

I wasn’t, by any means, a natural.

Was not one of those wow-hounds

born jaw-dropped. I was tough in the husk.

Went years untouched by rain. Took shelter

seriously, even and often especially

in good weather, my tears like teenagers

hiding under the hoods of my eyes,

so committed they were to never falling

for the joke of astonishment.

When I was told there were seven

wonders of the world, I trusted the math,

believed I had seen none of them.

Of course beauty hunted me.

It hunts everyone. But I outran it, hid

in worry, regret, the promise of an afterlife

or a week’s end.

Then one day, in a red velvet theater

in New Orleans, I watched Maya Angelou

walk on stage. Seventeen slow steps to the mic.

She took a breath before speaking,

and I could hear god being born in that breath.

My every pore reached out like a hand

pointing to the first unsinkable lotus in the bayou

of the universe. I’d never felt anything like it.

Searched the encyclopedia for the feeling’s name

when I got home: “Goosebumps.”

Afterward, I thought—I can do this.

Started training morning to night,

crowbar swinging like a pendulum at the wall

of my chest. Tore the caution tape off

my life and let everything touch it:

Allen Iverson on the television in his first season

with the Sixers, crossover sharp as a V of sparrows

flying through the paint like Michelangelo’s brush:

333 goosebumps.

My baby sister, sober for the first time

in thirteen years, calling to tell me she just noticed

our mother’s eyes are green:

505 goosebumps.

One day, my friend scored tickets

to a Prince concert. Tiny venue. I was right

behind the sound booth. Prince’s entire band

that evening—women. At the end of the show,

the sound person turned around and whispered,

He didn’t play one song on his setlist the whole night.

I live on stages. I know what it is to scratch a plan