When I spiral, it’s no waltz
I don’t fall like autumn’s leaves,
I lack their certain grace;
No -
I plummet like the driving rain
Blowing through cigarette smoke late at night
Is that what you wanted me to tell you? Not quite?
Stop searching for my poetry, it makes my skin crawl.
I’m not your great mystery, your tiny dancer
Your savior or your sin
For the love of god,
don’t stand in the waters at the bottom of this cliff
waiting to catch my fall
Go back and wander through the graveyard of my lovers
And memories of New Jersey,
If you don’t believe me
Let me walk out into the evening, like Auden may have done
I’ll be there to watch when the lovers have left
And the deep river still runs on
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 2:01 AM UTC
This is the first time these walls haven't been mine.
The first time since I picked out yellow paint and swirled pink-red rose buds onto it when I was four
The first time since I kicked a hole in the door, crying
The first time since I sat, looking out of that window (which is no longer quite mine) and dreaming of the places I would, could, might go
It's the first time since I snuck my first boy in here, parents gone and brother upstairs
The first time since I cried myself to sleep
It's the first time since I stared at the walls and talked myself off of the edge
The first time since I laid here, right here, but when it was mine, listening to records softly play
It's the first time since I climbed out of the window late at night and sat on the roof
The first and most rebellious thing I had done (it might still be)
This is the first time that these walls haven't felt like home.
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 12:14 AM UTC
You're so brave.
You say all of the things to me
that I've always wished I could say to you.
Somehow your kisses mean more than mine ever could
they're holding the remnants of your honeyed words.
And every time I see you I want to tell you the truth
I want to say it when we're leaving the train station, walking down the block, grabbing coffee, kissing by our elementary school.
And every time I see you, you steal my words away
So I'll make jokes, talk fast, run away, dart around all of the things I've ever wanted to do.
I can't imagine why you keep me around, always choking at the last moment
"I love, being with you"
"I love, the way your breath feels on my skin"
"I love, how you manage to hold me, even when I'm walking away"
And I do love all of those things. All of these moments with you,
moments that will be gone before they've begun.
And, my dear, my one, my only, my sun, my sweetie, my all
Those moments with you are what make it at once
so easy and so hard
to love you this much.
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
You told me once that I look like Audrey Hepburn
And walk like Katharine
That I am, in every way, a creature of another world.
They want, you said, gesturing widely around you,
the smallest pastoral pleasures: clothes, money, husbands
You, you said, looking at me, only me
"You want romance,
adventure,
the Stars.
I would run my own feet raw looking for every treasure in the universe
to lay at yours"
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 9:41 PM UTC
I'd love to love you
unsure and scared as I am
I'd love to love you and your touch
Wrapped by a fire or in a park
I'd love to love you and your dark hair and blue eyes
that love me back just a little too much
I'd love to love you
but I'm leaving so terribly
soon.
I'd love to love you, but I'm going away.
I'd love to love you, beneath a pale moon
but I couldn't bear, after, to say
goodbye.
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 9:21 PM UTC
You told me
late last night, (long past the time when
we could sensor our messages with
just the right amount of polite indifference)
how you have always been able to say what you need to me
better with a kiss
than with words.
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 10:09 AM UTC
Meeting you
was that moment in Spring when
Out of the frost and the rain and the cold and arid cries of Winter
The sun decides
on an impossible whim
To pull the leaves from hiding
And so one morning
before you have time to adjust to the glisten and green
They're alive again.
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 6:39 PM UTC
When you broke your arm
(in fourth grade)
You told me
(your deep blue eyes flickering, dancing around the room and across my face)
you had been trying to jump the chain link
fence (we, both of us, were breathless, reliving the adventure)
the dog giving chase, you leaping to the top
(the very top, a hundred feet, at least, from the ground)
and then the long fall down
(thinking it was to be your swan song, you fell, you swore to me, with unspeakable grace)
But it was not the end, after all. You walked back around home, grasping your arm with a fearsome grimace
(you would reenact that for me, the next day during recess)
And got all bandaged up properly.
Do you remember
(probably not, it was nothing, after all)
when I asked you about it the other day
(it's been years, and we, both of us, have grown)
And you'd tell me, with a laugh
(and a quick flicker of those astral eyes, an uncanny mirror of lost days)
That you had broken your arm
(not by pursuit of ravenous beast, nor through a fall to rival Rome's)
But when you tripped on the stairs
(you'd been all dressed up in your father's shoes.)
I smiled
(sort of, but not quite, like the first time you told me this story)
and joked that "Nowadays I'm sure they'd fit you far less clumsily."
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 4:36 PM UTC
I wish
I had freckles
on my shoulders that would
t
r
ick
le
down to my blades
and show that
I have tasted the sun
And I wish that my sc
ars
would show
and
not (hide neath my skin and in
my heart’s shadows)
to let you know
that I have
seen
my share
of hurt
and
Overcome.
May 6, 2013
May 6, 2013 at 10:20 PM UTC
Everyone has that place they go to when the world is too much with them. Or at least, near everyone. Mine is dark, like the sea, and it’s full of stars. It’s not quiet. It’s endless and orchestral, swirling with symphonies that I haven’t quite heard yet, symphonies that are always just a galaxy out of reach.
And sometimes it’s full of fields. I’m from the city, but they feel like home. They circle me and the sky is blindingly blue and I count my breaths: One, Two, Three, and so on. Until softly the wind blows and there I can imagine a different sort of song -- it doesn’t elude me; it consumes me. It’s there in the breeze, in the drifting bits of dust and pollen and tiny particles of sunshine. It’s great and beautiful and the first song that anyone ever heard.
And every so often. Only every so often. That song changes. It’s still within reach, but it’s a different tune. The song is light with floating, glowing ash; it’s heavy with a million voices and laughs and other songs; it drips with summer drinks and rushes through my soul. I am not alone in some black, celestial ocean or alone in golden labyrinths; home is no imagined place, nor are others just comforting phantoms. I am with them. It is more breathtaking than the stars, and more blinding than the sky.
It was like this that my summer began. In musical swells of escapism, visions of melodramatic beauty, grander than my true surroundings. It was built up like Fitzgerald crafted the West Egg, and it nearly ended much the same way; a journey homewards marked with disillusionment.
First came the traveling. I had hoped to find something I’d lost, and started out my search in the throbbing streets of Barcelona, saturated with sunlight during the days and at night with the sounds from sports bars as the football games ended, or young lovers’ laughter along the clear, black Mediterranean coast. Even the most hushed, winding alleys were full of something; perhaps this was just some magical element I conjured to make every moment new and original.
In Spain I found sea food and chilled beer and a bright rose to color my cheeks. I found churches crafted with dizzying dedication, art that made my heart stop, that somehow filled the world with its own sort of symphony.
Then came Paris. There was wine, red and deep and romantic, wine that Hemingway might have brooded over, or that Audrey Hepburn could have brought to her lips on some glamorous getaway from her Roman home. I found walls too, covered with Degas, with Monet and Manet alike, with Da Vinci and the rest. I discovered what it feels like to survey the Luxembourg Gardens on a July day, from a high shady point where despite denim shorts and a boulangerie sandwich, you’re aware that you’ve been graced with something that holds a euphoric regality.
And finally came a trip to Maine. On the shores of Bar Harbor I saw the endless pines and clear blue waters that spelled out the promised land for the first explorers. Atop Cadillac Mountain, as I burrowed into my father’s jacket and hid my face from the wind, I found the stars, as endless as I’d dreamt. They danced for me as for Van Gogh and I could have died up there. I found cool mornings to be filled with walks to rocky shores, and tea and berries and books. There was a different quality here than had been in my European travels. It was introspective and quiet aside from the chirps of crickets and birds and the laps of waves on dark cliffs. I loved it.
Each place held its own collection. Sand and shells and Spanish fans; metro tickets and corks and long linen dresses lightened on the bottom from the waters of the Seine; sea glass pulled from the harbor and dream catchers and endless dog-eared pages. Physical, tangible, ephemeral things for me to grasp onto. I added them to my character, grafted them to my bones, made them my own.
But what use is imagined significance; I hadn’t grown or changed or even learned what it was I had been looking for. I was several weeks older, I had seen a few more corners of the world, granted meaning to trinkets and decided they added to my worth.
It was August then. Shorter days for fluttering leaves and the understanding that nothing separated me from the person I had been aside from the hours between us. Direction in life can’t be dreamt up, it’s earned. It’s what you’re allowed to have after you’ve fallen down and picked yourself back up. I fell, but chose to imagine a new self in faraway places where my troubles couldn’t find me amidst the breezy, sunny crowds.
The cobblestone Parisian streets, the docks of Barcelona, the coves of Maine; they were only where I fled to when my own world was too much with me. When I couldn’t find any use in continuing as myself, I invented a girl laughing on the edge of l’Arc de Triomphe, wading quietly into the inky mystery of the warm sea, or hiding in pine forests with a copy of Wuthering Heights and a serious demeanor. She was the same girl that lost herself into empty fields and dark oceans of stars.
Only one thing stopped the self-absorption that had claimed me that summer. It was nothing fateful; nothing original. I didn’t traverse the world to see this, and the experience was not mine alone. It didn’t hold any old hollywood glamour, nor was it the topic of any of Hemingway’s books. Or maybe it was. It was true, after all. It was the truest thing I did the entire summer; it wasn’t adorned with portraits or cathedrals or soaring landscapes because it didn’t need to be. Hemingway, I think, might have liked that. What I’m going on about now is that Every-So-Often moment. It doesn’t stand lonely in my memory, like so many of the others might. It’s brimming not with strangers and false romantic visions, but with the company of those souls you’re allowed to feel like you’ve known for your entire life, for more than your entire life. The sounds of empty seas and shapeless symphonies have no part; instead, there’s the strumming of guitars with songs so familiar they place an ache right in the core of you. You ache because that moment, full of bonfire and friends and song, is becoming you in a way that nothing else could have (for all of your efforts). It’s a beautiful ache, the one you get when you’ve come home after a long time spent lost and away.
May 6, 2013
May 6, 2013 at 10:19 PM UTC