Honest Poem

After Rudy Francisco’s My Honest Poem

I was born on February 25; that makes me a Pisces.
I know exactly what that means.
I am 5 foot 7 and today I weigh 153 pounds
but like any woman –
it changes day by week by month by year and has
nothing to do with who I am.
I like to write poems while sitting on the floor
and I am a sucker for ladies who wear red lipstick
and men who can name a feeling.

I’m still learning how to be still and not care
what stories people make up about me.
I am often waiting for the right time to say the right thing
and often assigning songs to people to help me
remember how much I love them when they are gone.
I was born on a Monday which is to say,
I am perpetually on time, ready to begin.
I will begin, be new, be ready
until I have no Mondays left.

I have been told that I have an
insatiable need for control – and that
used to be true. My anxiety only could be
kept at a low rage if I had every moment
outlined on a calendar – for everyone in my
life to abide by. Check marked lists were my drug.
But I haven’t made a list for my life in a long time
and check marks are now reserved for
grocery lists (or work). You might not believe it,
but now – sometimes I wing it and only add
to my cart what will feel like glitter in the gullet.

I have this odd fascination with finding
the most strange Airbnbs online and creating
wishlists of ridiculous environments I could stay in.
Disco house. Lovers lounge. Aquatic escape.
That’s why I fall in love with spaces and can’t stay
in one for too long – because the beating pulse
of trying to find words usually always becomes a flood
the moment I find myself in a new world.
So I will seek new worlds for the rest of my life.

I know this sounds weird,
but the thing I am best at is moderation.
(We can thank my Mormon roots for this.)
I have never let anything take me over completely.
Not love. Not work. Not substances. Not motherhood.
And that is no way to write poems.
Sometimes, you have to lean in to the chaos.
Because it is always there –
regardless of lists or having your shit together.
It’s an electric current of real I have always pushed down.
I admire those who embrace their chaos.
No — I am jealous.
Because no one ever told me that
feeling chaotic or out of control
was a normal human condition.

Check mark
Check mark
Check mark

Hi. My name is Chelsea.
I enjoy Negronis, kissing that becomes a portal,
and long periods of solitude until it is almost weird.
But I don’t allow myself to lose control.
I have gold plated organizational skills.
Skills so next level, I get paid a good amount
of money to keep others on track.
I build check lists as a career.
I never panic at missed deadlines,
I just remake them.
My hobbies include doom scrolling,
giving away energy to others when I have none,
hiding behind metaphors,
and holding back the word “love”.

I don’t know much, but I know this;
even the smallest attempt at breaking free
from the curated, fake cages handed to me —
is building houses of poetry I could live in forever.
I understand now that wild abandon
is the only way to truly, freely bloom like a star.
I don’t need to be a galaxy, but then again,
galaxies are only born by way of
beautiful, chaotic collapse and combustion.