I am the kind of girl that boys dream
about. A subconscious afterthought who arrives
in darkness and idle, lazy ambling. I am not
the kind of girl boys think about. There
is no conscious decision made behind my arrival,
no, I am under the cloak of dark and sleep, too
muddled and nonsensical to possibly be
a product of waking musings.
Feb 6, 2022
Feb 6, 2022 at 12:03 AM UTC
I am accustomed to being a first
love. This is not an infatuation with pure
or loving the untouched. It is
an infatuation with the losing
dogs. In school, my best subject was always
English, my second best subject:
history. The past is important. I only
know how to work through my history
with words. I cannot work through
someone else's history with my
words. When I am not a first
love, I want to write to the loves
who came before me. But how do
I write to a love that was not mine?
I imagine it would start with
an apology.
Jan 4, 2022
Jan 4, 2022 at 10:54 PM UTC
To say our love is in its death throes
is to give it the gravitas
of a body. And like a dead body, it is
slowly bleeding out. But when a body
reaches the end, it has lived
and our love has hardly taken shallow
breaths. maybe it was never born.
Our love is closer to an orange left
in the decorative bowl of fruit,
not in my own home, but my mother's, too
long and forgotten until it begins to smell.
This love-is it rotting or soft.
Or maybe not at all.
Jan 4, 2022
Jan 4, 2022 at 10:50 PM UTC
How ironic that your most played songs are an ode
to the devil, and my most played songs are an ode to you.
Our love was punctuated by music. You held it so close
to your chest, I had to peel it off your fingertips.
From the moment I met you, you were linked to an album
of *** and lust and love and guilt. You listened
to the whole thing in one day. Your favorite was the song about doom.
You always handed me your phone when you drove, “Play
something new.” When you liked the song, you drove slower. If
the roads were quiet, you would drum on my left leg
with your right hand, putting my song in your body, you always
kissed me at red lights. You picked the music when we cooked
but it was always an album I had shown
you. I cooked and you cleaned, and you always worried when you ran
out of things to clean, but I never gave you a task because
when your hands went idle, they locked around my waist
and these were the moments I fell in love. Our love stopped
quietly. Music poured from your bedroom that did all the yelling
and wailing and pounding for you. You played drums
at your church and on me and on you, and I wonder if this pounding
on your legs is too your chosen self harm. Was loving
me your chosen religion? Am I more heaven or hell?
I left church and only fondly remember the music.
Your favorite band is Make Them Suffer, which is how I imagine
Hell and how you imagine our love.
Relationships are religion and I don’t wonder
if there’s a god when I’m in love.
Oct 28, 2021
Oct 28, 2021 at 1:56 AM UTC
You and him would sit side by side
in a classroom arranged alphabetically
with your last names falling C D and first
names sharing a J. Although I try not to sometimes
I cannot help but see the other things
you share: the fall of your hair the green
of your eyes the music you love the slope of your chin why
you like me. Five years stand between you two and I fear
only one year will stand between the mistake
of you and the maybe mistake of him.
Jul 21, 2021
Jul 21, 2021 at 2:21 AM UTC
For the first time since childhood my bed was in the corner and this felt safe to be tucked in by walls.
Sometimes, I woke up with bruises from hitting it, but I never moved my bed.
You have thin walls and broken blinds and crumbling brick and leaking windows and I cried when my parents first walked out your doors because I fear people walking out on me.
And you became this one place of safety and home.
There is the living room where I sat with two strangers I was suddenly contractually tied to.
There is the bed that I sat on the end of with my fingers measuring my wrist one morning and Clara suddenly said, “you’re going to be fine” and there is where I realized I do not hide so well as I think.
There is the tile I stared at when I purged the last time.
There is where Jack read my poetry.
There is where I lay laughing and living like my younger self dreamed.
There are the stairs we tumbled down, high and happy, and there is where Clara and I sat talking until four am.
All around is where what happened at the party stayed at the party.
There is where I had *** the third time and the two hundredth time.
There is where I popped the shame and admitted it.
There is where I asked Joseph where his life turned and went wrong. And there is the spot where I fell in love for the second time. And there is the spot where Sam almost caught us, like suppressed teenagers, skin to skin.
There is the picture window we loved to leave open while we cleaned and cooked and baked.
There is the door we left unlocked for Michael and Sam and Sarah and Tommy to breeze in and out of.
There is the window and door we kept closed and locked from the prying eyes of the neighbor downstairs.
There is where I sat when I looked Clara and Abby in the eyes and lied.
And there is where I stood when they caught onto the truth.
And there is where I cried when the second love shattered.
There is the spot on the floor I talked to when I said, “maybe this is what I deserve.” And there is what Abby widened her eyes towards when she said, “I wish I could make you see it’s not.”
There is the wall I leaned against when I told Michael and Bret, too drunk to know my words from each other, about the moment of force. And there is where they said, “do not ever date men who treat you like that again when you deserve a perfect one.”
And there is the corner where Michael sat months after I admitted I had done it again.
There is the spot where Conner said he was falling in love. And there is the spot where I did not say it back.
There is where Andrew picked me up to kiss me in the glow of the street light before he went home.
There is the front step where Caleb said, “Wait, first, will you kiss me?”
There is the floorboard where Abby set her laptop and we drank whiskey and ate clementines and watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower on her last night.
There is the counter where Michael taught me how to do tequila shots.
There is the parking spot where Rhiannon and I unraveled our lives and then intertwined them to put them back together.
You have seen these broken hearts and drunken nights and ***** filled violence and maybe I am walking out with more bruises than I walked in with, but you became this one place of home.
Jun 25, 2021
Jun 25, 2021 at 12:16 AM UTC
A / Korean / friend of my mother’s returned
from Seoul with a gift for me / a Hanbok /
glowing with violent shades of pink and yellow
when I settled the / chima / on my shoulders
and tied the / jeogori / around my waist
I felt like a / white girl / in an / oriental costume /
The year I turned six / my white brother /
brought me to his school when they talked
about / South Korea / a real live / Korean /
to ooh and aah at while a map on the whiteboard
displayed my far off land for them to ogle
with / wide eyes / I leaned into the mirror
that night and ogled my / small eyes / that no
amount of widening could make / white /
All those / white / kids called me / ***** /
Like / ***** / in your armor? I thought
When / my white brother / got married no one
thought I was there for him everyone
thought I was there for his / Vietnamese /
wife. We’re here for the / white boy / his / Korean /
friend drawled. My ally in this sea of / white /
May 12, 2021
May 12, 2021 at 1:18 AM UTC
1.My mother's favorite color is the palest blue, the same as her eyes. For years, my favorite color was hers because I wanted to be just like her. At nine, I fell in love with green because everyone else loved blue and I wanted to be just like no one. At sixteen, I fell in love with a boy who had green eyes. And skin the color of sunshine and honey. I thought it a coincidence his eyes held the orbs of liquid green in the very shade I found so enchanting.
2. At twenty one, I have been hypnotized by and loved romantically and loved platonically and ****** a sea of green and still think it a coincidence because I am oblivious to eye color. I did not notice my roommate's eye color until our second year of sleeping on mattresses on the floor, laid a yard away from one another.
3. My roommate has green eyes.
4. I am writing this, like the Duke's servants who moonlit as actors, in a green room, behind the scenes. The room where actors reside during a play when they are not on stage is called a green room. Sometimes this room is painted green, sometimes not. This green room where I wait is green. The green room took its name from the fact that its walls were often painted green to rest the eyes of actors after exposure to stage lights. The green room may also derive its name because the London Blackfriars Theatre has a room in 1599 that was green where the actors waited. The origin of the term has been lost. There is no definitive place from whence it comes.
5. Acting is almost lying. In acting, one is meant to become a different person, not quite a lie, but not quite honest. Actors have the ability to become different people, consider motives, achieve an objective. Subsequently, many actors are brilliant manipulators. Many actors are brilliant liars.
6. I am not one of these actors. I am a terrible liar.
7. A wave in that sea of green was a terrible actor, but a brilliant liar.
8. One day, we took a walk just before it rained when the sky turned a gray-green and streaked with gold. A man stopped us and asked, "Hey, what's your favorite color?" "Green," he said without missing a beat. "Your favorite color isn't green, it's black." "I know." "Why did you lie?" "I don't know."
9. That was the first lie.
10. I thought it was a coincidence that he had green eyes, just like other people I love and loved. Mere coincidence. Or divine intervention. Or a sign. It started to pour right after that first lie. Mere coincidence. Or divine intervention. Or a sign. After him, I ****** blue eyes. I sought love from brown eyes. I kissed anything in between. anything but green. I wanted the company of brown eyes blue eyes anything but green. My roommate's green eyes are the exception.
11. Green eyes. Honey, you are the sea upon which I float and I came here to talk. I think you should know, the green eyes, you're the one that I wanted to find.
Apr 23, 2021
Apr 23, 2021 at 10:24 PM UTC
Mine is indecisive skin:
somewhere in between yellow
and off white,
mottled with red at some times,
mottled with scars at all times.
Yellow enough that when mono
ravaged through sixth grade
with symptoms listed as yellow
discoloration of the skin
a kid pointed at me and asked
like that? of it.
I do not write it beautiful
the way Rachel Rostad does:
“[my skin] was pacific sunset,
almond milk, a porcelain cup.”
I prefer to indulge in the comfort
of sweaters and long pants and hair
framing my cheeks, hiding
what my eyes my hair my name
give away. Joseph loved me
for my eyes my hair my name not
my skin, said
I don’t like your skin tone,
and I took this criticism as cruel and probably
fell a little bit out of love with him that night,
with his asian anime schoolgirl fetish
with his white boy privilege
but do you really think I’m talking to you about my skin?
Mar 15, 2021
Mar 15, 2021 at 1:49 AM UTC
I stopped loving you
The moment you stopped loving me
And I wonder what this says about me
That I do not love other people
Unless they love me
And I do not say I love you
Unless they say it first.
Jan 14, 2021
Jan 14, 2021 at 8:48 PM UTC