It’s Sunday,
and I call my mother.
I spend an hour picking shards out of my teeth
From whatever broke her.
It’s an art I’ve practiced since childhood:
Smiling with gums bleeding.
You’d only hear the grimace in my voice
If you listened to me like I was a person.
Listened
As if I was not a reflection
Or an extension.
It’s Sunday,
and my mother answers
Without the slightest hint
That by the time I finished
dialing her number
The first aid kit had already been opened.
My fiancée’s fingers hover over an
“Are you alright?” text
Poised to hit send
When she hears the grimace -
Because she hears the grimace.
It’s Sunday,
And I do not call my mother.
My birthday visited yesterday
And echos greeted me
In her place -
Fractures that had been growing
unspoken,
We fell into headfirst.
My gums aren’t bleeding
But my teeth still ache.
May 20, 2024
May 20, 2024 at 5:33 PM UTC
Your grief barks at faces
That aren’t there
And you do nothing
To stop it
As it bares its teeth
And bites back into the past;
Memories bleeding
And you do nothing
To stop them
As their blood pools
And stains your feet;
You walk through the years
Leaving tracks
Leading from things that happened
That never have healed
And still,
Your grief is barking
And biting
And still,
You do nothing
To stop it.
Aren’t you tired of hurting?
Oct 28, 2021
Oct 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM UTC
I will love you with a soul on fire
With my spine as the wick;
I will love you as long
As my days are quick.
Jul 12, 2021
Jul 12, 2021 at 4:00 AM UTC
A brokenness is in us
Like a window
Never closed;
Drafty and meddlesome
When it rains,
But at least the sun
Always finds its way in
And least we remember
That we are more
Than our flaws -
We are also the light
That shines through them.
Apr 29, 2021
Apr 29, 2021 at 3:58 AM UTC
I’ve tried to discover secrets
But I am not tall enough to swim
In some parts of my heart
And the universe is under construction
But they won’t say when it opens
And the most radical things I have found
That I can possibly say to you are:
I love you, I’m sorry, I’m trying.
A mantra, a chant, a benediction?
Definitions are only important for the dictionary
Tomorrow checks out of the library,
Because the Present cannot read
So it does not care for words written
On spongy walls in the dead of night.
The present cares about the decorations
Of space called actions and whether
They match the aesthetic
And I don’t know if mine do but:
I love you, I’m sorry, I’m trying
If you hear echoes and they are the same hue
As you knew me to be, and you wonder
If they are shockwaves from the time
I jumped headfirst into the shallow end
Of a sunny day trying to find words
That would mean something to you,
I hope they have not been distorted beyond
The ability to make out
My heart desperately beating in its staccato:
I love you, I’m sorry, I’m trying
Because I am weak
I am small
I am struggling
And many days
I am dying,
But
I love you,
I’m sorry,
And I’m trying.
Apr 28, 2021
Apr 28, 2021 at 10:19 PM UTC
I’d fall from heaven a thousand times
If I knew you were wishing on me like a shooting star
And I think there’s a name for that -
When you’re willing to run headfirst
Into the worst pain you’ve ever felt
So the person on the other side
Sees fireworks and believes even for a moment
That everything is beautiful.
I’d crush myself into a fine powder and sprinkle it on a windowsill
If it made you believe in pixie dust and laughing sprites
And filled you with the spirit that you were young and free and innocent.
You wouldn’t even have to know it was my heart
laying on the ground at the door,
there to wipe off all the dirt from the roads
you’ve been forced to travel alone,
before you stepped into the future
And I think there’s a name for that -
I just want to make your eyes sparkle
like remnants of the first volcanic eruption
that gave birth to the cliffs we’ve danced upon
like edges aren’t permanent
And our bodies aren’t temporary -
I just want to be a thing that makes this heavy world you wear like a fashionable coat
And not the strait jacket it feels like to me,
A little lighter, a little easier;
I want to be a thing with my back pushed against the walls
Straining to keep them even an inch further away
So that life is a little more spacious for you,
And you have the room to take deeper breaths -
And I do not mind if you don’t know it’s me who’s falling from great heights
To be your shooting star,
because it’s not about me at all -
It’s about giving your wishes a chance to come true,
And the willingness to crash and burn and do it again and again
Until the universe takes pity and starts listening and makes it happen.
And I think there’s a name for that -
This is me with my heart in the chamber
And my lips on the trigger
Giving you my best shot.
I hope you see me falling across the sky
Just for you
And I hope you make a wish on me
And I hope I figure out
By the time I hit the ground
How to make your wish come true.
And I think there’s a name for that-
And if it’s not
What I think it’s called,
It’s still yours regardless.
Mar 2, 2021
Mar 2, 2021 at 7:45 AM UTC
There’s a language in your eyes
I want to know like my native tongue;
Teach me how to speak to you
And feel your essence fill my lungs;
Run your fingers over me
And wherever you touch, I’ll be clean.
Heaven is the space where my hand
Wraps around yours,
And hell is every time you say goodbye
And I watch you walk out the door.
I’ve heard the whispers of saints in your laugh
and god sits on the corners of your lips.
I want to learn the art of devotion on my knees,
Deliver to me my salvation with your kiss.
I’m all yours, and although I’m a sinner,
I believe in your quiet footsteps
Like church bells sounding out
The truths I’ve been searching for, and yet -
They tell me the divine ones
Live on parchment
or locked behind heavenly doors,
But you’re right here sipping coffee
Next to me
on the floor.
Mar 2, 2021
Mar 2, 2021 at 7:40 AM UTC
Some things we trust,
Because we simply must -
The sun and stars will dance again
Though they disappear from sight;
The moon is there, singing her song,
Even when clouds hide her at night.
The ocean keeps its deepest secrets
And never ceases with its whispers;
The sky paints itself anew each day
And never finds itself running out of colors.
The grass will kiss the tips of flowers,
And the trees will wave hello and goodbye-
And we will one day love again,
Before our times on earth draw nigh.
Sep 16, 2020
Sep 16, 2020 at 12:32 AM UTC
I believed in you,
and now I believe in nothing but:
The honesty of a thunderstorm -
And the promises in a roses thorns -
And the whispers from the moon at midnight -
Nothing haunted ends up being “just alright.”
We take the blood and make it art -
From broken glass, a mosaic of shards
And present it to the world and ask,
“Will you see the depths in me at last?
Can you see me in these jagged pieces?
I’m somewhere in the truth of this mess.”
You don’t always get an answer
But the asking makes you braver,
And you grit your teeth until your gums bleed,
Turning a profit from your tragedies,
And pretend it was all worth it -
Say you’d do it all again.
But I look away from the pretty face
At the other end of the bar.
I’m not gonna chase my ghosts
To the backseat of her car.
I don’t want to make
Another showcase from my heartbreak -
I’ve lost too much blood to bleed
All over a stranger’s sheets.
So I’ll just drink my amber peace and leave,
Because I believed in you and now I believe in nothing,
But the scars you left
And the words you said
And the places I now can’t go.
There are some aspects of poetry
I wish I didn’t know.
Sep 16, 2020
Sep 16, 2020 at 12:16 AM UTC
There’s something powerful about a storm -
Transformative and destructive and cleansing.
Like a lover that kisses in passion’s throes -
All lips and teeth and bruises.
It’s beautiful in its orchestrated chaos -
Nature’s screaming catharsis.
There’s something powerful about the silence
That settles after the storm has left;
The petrichor that smells like a balm -
A tender touch, apologizing and soothing;
The calm stillness that descends and frets
Over the pretty things that stayed behind,
Petals dripping.
There’s something brave about the land after,
These survivors turning chaos into blooms,
Saying, “See us? Aren’t we the strong?
For in our delicacy, our tenderness,
Do we not grow from thunder?”
I am learning to love the me I am now
In the aftermath of you.
Your bruises have faded and I bloom;
I am learning there is something powerful
About my own petrichor,
About my own defiant petals dripping.
You were powerful, but transient.
Now, I am the pretty thing that stays and survives-
Firm and rooted and beautiful,
Taking every powerful and painful storm,
And turning lightning into art.
Sep 16, 2020
Sep 16, 2020 at 12:13 AM UTC