​Eyes.

And if I take off this suit
And unzip it past
The marks and hills to reveal something luminous
Light
If I take a new name
Or a new heart
If the cloth fits the way it should like a gauze
And if my eyes lose their dull overdone agony
Could I be held?
Would we sit there
Luminous in front of each other
Too scared
To touch
Even with the past unzipped
Would we sit there
And refuse to look?

---

Vanessa Bernice De La Cruz is a writer and artist from Los Angeles, CA. Their work has appeared in Carve, Puerto del Sol, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and in the anthology Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. You can find them tweeting while half-asleep @vbdelacruz