it was hard when the world went still
but i think a special kind of love bloomed from it
a love i would never have found if i wasn't forced to care for myself
i find myself appreciating the small things far more often
the yellow flowers beneath the kitchen window
the way the light hits the chemistry building in the distance at around 8:30 pm every night
setting the exterior alight
a burning orange that glows just for me
there is an eery stillness of inanimate objects
they sit and stare, waiting to be used
frozen to a surface until brought to life by touch
i think this is how i have let myself live for a while now
coming alive only when desired by another
i think that i will be that other
for myself
for the rest of my days
because if need me, then i will always have purpose
Mar 10, 2023
Mar 10, 2023 at 3:51 PM UTC
Before I choked the air with weightless comfort,
I felt the buoyancy of unrequited love;
this heaviness of life so unfamiliar to me.
I have only ever seen the laments of the living, never touched,
and how their faces distort in a twist uglier than the wind
that carries ash and soul to rest.
How ignorant to believe that my ferocity was by chance,
the queen of Carthage built her demise
to loom over the love of her city.
Very quickly, I could tell no difference between the arch of
her spine and that of a warrior's. How naive of me
to have felt proud, as she used me to gaze upon
her legacy. I could not see the content in her eyes, and it was too late
when I felt a piece of me splinter and become one
with her sternum. If I could cry out, please know I would.
I crush my anguish into flame and warp the vapour of
her being to wipe your tears but you choke.
The only solace I can offer is the gentle caress of her spirit
as I carry her, as if she is Moses and I the Nile,
passing through to wrestle Hades for the reins of Hell.
Nov 2, 2020
Nov 2, 2020 at 7:00 PM UTC
linearity— what a concept
you want me to have, so badly
does this desire consume you
that you are unable to differentiate
your description of me
clever
funny
nymphomaniac
i play the game of feigned offence
manipulative?
no, sweet
****** up
there is a way you spit
at my lack of linearity unless
i am rubbing it in circles per
your instruction
underneath your torso
tense in anticipation
if you had seen me as a supplicant to pleasure
this time last year
begging to relish in submission, rather
than recoil in obedience
you would not question the pride i hold
at my ability to ******
Jul 11, 2020
Jul 11, 2020 at 1:51 PM UTC
When a rose does fester in the soil that kept her sweet,
Lilies and hydrangea left unscathed,
Should the hand that caressed her petals soft
Be plucked from the wrist it is rooted upon?
Were the fingers that introduced the rose to the sun,
To blame for the torrent that gave too much?
All the rain knows to do is pour; Zeus taught his sons his rage
And his daughters to consume.
So the rose did what she was told,
She submerged herself in the downpour of fury
Absorbing all that would brighten her beauty,
For what is the purpose of a rose, if it is not choked by its own glory?
May 29, 2020
May 29, 2020 at 3:52 PM UTC
I read a story once,
about the Strait of Messina.
And two beautiful women
who made a home between the waves.
The gods and their children
envied the ferocity of the women.
So in one fell swoop,
they snatched the earth from beneath their toes
and banished them to the only place they believed deserved them.
And so it was.
While earth picks at the cracks of its surface,
tearing itself limb from limb,
conflicts in the ocean merely strengthen the wave
soon to return to the rhythm of the sea.
How foolish the gods must have been,
to pour such power and lust
into the wildest weapon of all;
one that could sink its quarrel into the fractures of land they called home – if it so wished.
Men sang fear into their legacies,
the same men that raided villages for kleos
robbed mothers of their children,
and girls of their free-will.
But of course – the women within the waves were the monsters.
May 12, 2020
May 12, 2020 at 3:16 PM UTC
I think a year has passed
since I felt the first flicker of rage.
The spark that forced a home in the tense of my shoulders;
the small of my back; each fragment of my skin that tingles
when it remembers how a mattress can sting.
I watched you tie your laces
and told you I would see you tomorrow,
and I did. The day that followed too.
If I shroud myself in ignorance, I thought,
perhaps I can forget that it was me under your torso that night.
And the shroud kept me safe
for a few days, at least.
But after I saw you for what I didn't know to be the final time,
I reached for a warmth to pull around my shoulders –
and I felt you, for what I knew then, would not be the last.
I tried to teach myself to cope,
but the films I sought resonance from scolded me;
for not being the perfect victim;
for not setting my hatred alight as soon as I saw that look in your eyes;
for telling you I'd missed the embrace I should have resented.
I am angrier than I used to be.
Our friends remain yours, and I moved schools.
There is a cluster of horizons on my thighs, from nights I punish myself for the pain you ignited.
And now it takes just under half a bottle,
to feel with somebody new.
May 10, 2020
May 10, 2020 at 8:08 PM UTC
for a little while
i felt as though i had gotten away with something
very large
a flesh eating habit
that had taken bites out my thigh
to subdue the stinging in my head
Apr 3, 2020
Apr 3, 2020 at 7:20 PM UTC
I like to watch a plea compile between the furrow of a brow,
like the indents of age that shot across the forehead of Odysseus
as he stood before his father and asked:
This place I've reached, is it truly Ithaca?
On the face of Laertes' child,
longing stung like a bolt from Zeus
wishing to belong within a home once overrun by memory,
now ruled by the shell of a war-torn son.
I see this look as your body drapes over mine,
skin honeyed with pleasure and fatigue.
Your eyes darken into a question you never ask,
tracing the remnants of the pain I felt a year or so ago
scarred into skin sweet only to your touch.
It does not take a sword to wound, and the mind can feel the blood-thirst of a thousand men.
Frequently, I have felt akin to the battleground of Troy,
not the warriors themselves, but the soil beneath their feet
the ground that saw hope die with the sting of metal.
I would be a fool to believe the war does not silently wage on, years after the last sight of a blade.
We lie side by side, and I will try to not disturb you as I toss and turn,
I reach for you but your body, in its coldness, awaits the pyre I pretend is not there.
In their eternal bed carved from life,
I imagine Penelope
wide-eyed and hungry. As the man she waited for
recalls the one-eyed giants
or that sweet, tempestuous song of the Sirens.
And I wonder how he musters the strength to sail by untouched,
forced each night to face the ones that did not return
and worse; the parts of himself he will never feel again.
Apr 3, 2020
Apr 3, 2020 at 7:17 PM UTC
did it make you feel
closer
to me?
my breath
caught between you and that broken mattress
the one we flipped and turned
and slept on like kids
pillows at the wrong end
dreams left wandering
in your eyes
there was this surge
a rage
filled with possibility
in the absence of my free will
my body
immovable under you knees
my words
lost
in the ringing of desire
bouncing
back
and forth
defending the sudden deafness
of your senses
you are now
closer to me
whether that was indeed your intention
you trace me
despite purposeful lack of communication
i feel the weight of your breath
and the sting of your torso
when i lay very still
or grasp at my sheets
as the sun rises
occupying the loneliest single bed i've ever known
since that night
when you dictated my fate
and i lay
counting the planes that flew overhead
until it was over
Oct 4, 2019
Oct 4, 2019 at 2:31 PM UTC
The bravest of us all, was indeed
the queen of Carthage. Who all at once,
became a unity of her own.
A woman alone, drowned by the subtle gust
of pain from her fleeing love
gave her own breath, they say,
to pave a holy lineage.
The sword in her sternum the centre of a compass,
and there blew the stench of her
sacrifice to guide her love further adrift.
In her death, she did not require
the tainted love of the son of Rome.
His fate swayed between the coasts
of the Tyrrhenian, but hers - a lovely and furious force,
a collision sharper than the
teeth of Scylla, a riot of the elements.
Dido did not sacrifice
her life for the pilgramage of Aeneas,
the ash that was once her skin
returned to the soil of her city, the vapour
of her spirit entwined within the winds.
And although her very being burnt
in glimpses of orange and red, I like to think
that her soul swam besides the vessel
of her downfall. Not to forever be beside
the man of her enticement,
but to surpass the will of fate
and find herself in the sway of the waves.
I like to think
that as she overtook the man and his crew,
into the open arms of beauty and possibility,
knowing the hope
the adventure
that awaited her,
she knew the power of a city
could not be contained within the shell of a man.
Sep 28, 2019
Sep 28, 2019 at 4:52 PM UTC