you will be happy again.
you will have dry eyes for months on end,
walk the beach in the evening,
laugh until you ache.
it gets better. you know that. you hear that every day.
but you're sitting there losing your hair,
slicing your hips with a shard of glass
blaming yourself.
girl, you know lows but there are highs you don't know exist.
and one day, you will breathe in deep and fill yourself
full of good food and the company of people that are meaningful and real,
again. you're going to crawl out of that gaping hole, take a shower,
pay your bills, and realize you aren't as small as you feel right now, today,
this week, this month, this year.
and even though you'll also watch dear ones fall into ditches that cave in on themselves,
skinning knees and breaking your heart to pieces,
you'll also watch them live better than they ever had before and that,
that option, that light in their eyes and strength in their soul
makes it worth it. and you'll have it too.
and one day you'll look in the mirror and stop hating yourself,
stop caring if he calls or he doesn't
stop shattering to pieces the moment you step into a solitary space.
and even though maybe tomorrow you'll wake up and
have to stay in bed for another week
swaddling yourself in that familiar black carpet
you will be happy again because just like it is impossible to
stay happy forever,
just like it is impossible to ever fill that crack in your foundation,
just like you are sad now and have been sad before,
I swear, I promise,
it is just as impossible to stay miserable forever
and you will be happy again.
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 3:32 AM UTC
I watched the city disappear, then
watched it re-emerge from the night sky,
dabs of watercolor on a surface gathering pigment
I hummed and watched myself shudder and stumble and balk because,
(and I want to sit you down and tell you this
somber eyes, twisted fingertips)
I loved deeply, completely, and I crawled down the steps
of letting anything and everything go;
I moved on, I moved away, but I lacked the strength to disintegrate
the questions pooling in the bottom of my gall bladder
"well what if
would you..."
I was different then, I fell so delightedly!
but things did so hurt, time stole the breath from my throat
and I soaked my pillows so thoroughly I drowned.
I want you to know that,
I want you to know that I have had my heart broken violently
and softly (and perhaps that was worse)
I have loved and I have ****** and I have watched a boy like you fade into the sunset.
pacing through the motions:
feeling bright, content
things are new and better but
I'm capturing unextraordinary in all the traps I set for bliss,
like a maze I'm losing where all the dead ends say
unremarkable
and screaming at the walls
"start feeling, you ****
because I have sweet and loving and caring but I find myself craving
the instances I hated when he would spit fire
and I would burn bright, because I am a purveyor of highs and lows and I
just feel flat.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 10:55 PM UTC
when did I wake up okay?
when did the sun stop hurting my eyes
when did I start being able to get out of bed everyday
no problem,
when did I roll over and get out of bed and dress myself in clothes I liked,
walk the streets with clicking heels and bright eyes,
when did I start knowing how to spot a pothole a mile away and avoid it
or hop out of it the minute I felt myself slipping,
when did I start ordering coffee and
enjoying the stillness of a night or a day,
able to look in the mirror and be content,
even pleased,
with softness and curves and things I can't change,
when did I become happier than the women that look in the mirror at their tight ***** and hate themselves?
when did I start saying take me or leave me and then
doing the leaving myself,
confident in my ability to start over;
when
did I wake up strong?
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 10:53 PM UTC
the world feels lighter,
a shade of grey, floating, airy;
in december I swear the world was deep maroon, people were falling off the edges of a flat piece of paper
and now, spherical,
self-saving, breathing, alive.
we trudged through sorrow, fragmented bodies,
we huddled together in the wind and waited for something,
anything,
someone.
the feeling of sliding tthrough a crack and miraculously appearing in a cavern of gold
and blue skies for miles,
curving over the horizon,
just so.
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 1:16 AM UTC
I have been bright, hovering for weeks with the edges of ovals I so narrowly believed to be bicycle wheels,
discovering good friends in places right under the windowsill, freshening up the roses
in the pots I'd forgotten about on the back porch.
and there's you, a dream perhaps,
a sliver of pecan pie left over from the holidays but increasingly fresh
I'd like to twinge the tremors in your body that make you hum
and satiate pulsing bodies in flat, parallel lines of desire and decisiveness
I'd like to be the twisting ivy on the brimming edges of tentative youth,
to scale your walls and snuggle in the safety of wonderment and lack of knowing,
any better.
I'd like to make the bluebirds sing with throats of slim-cut rubies,
to have contentment and a battle born, hand held, period of time in which
I can enjoy a piece of dessert, well deserved
Jan 14, 2013
Jan 14, 2013 at 8:51 PM UTC
I was magnificent.
I sat there in the dark, alone, and I clutched christmas lights to my chest.
whispering, "here,"
I have wept for my broken hearts, I have meandered down paths that led me slowly here
I am content. I reach backwards with my left, to
those I see stumble,
to catch them if they fall, to see-saw them to the
right there ahead, glinting with age 25
and the sunshine on newly tinted hair.
I haven't caught all the hands or all of the tears,
but I can grasp the holes they left behind with a strength anew
Dec 28, 2012
Dec 28, 2012 at 3:44 PM UTC
the sinking sun keeps calling
poetic bones and walgreens; three am
flinging glass, nightmares, explicit
circles of the wind
singing into daybreak
shutters slamming shut; flickering eyelashes
and flopping into pillows fluffing up
shifting clouds of how you smelled
porch swings, heartbreaks
capturing breezes soaking skulls
red wine and "oh-take-mine"
tracing outlines imprinted
swaying grass lays flat
where you were,
but the summer sun keeps calling
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 6:35 AM UTC
last night scraped painstakingly
from the fissures in my brain
scraped like ink from wood-latch boxes with
fancy carved roses on the top
chewing apart memories with
your nails clenched into my hand
I am falling out of love all over again
clicking keys and snapping wrists
ripped strings and fractured minds
slipping into different facades
of distances that felt closer
six trembling months so
long
touching your palm
with a face that isn't real anymore
pillow cased fingertips touching cheeks
bumping elbows ripple through ponds of
tension seething just under the skin and
details throb in my temples
I have vanished from the city skyline
I am taking back my couch, I am stepping on dried roses
pilfering paint from butterfly wings
frankly darling sweet pea
there were these picnic baskets and sunflowers
bitterly lamenting to everyone but printed on both sides
of your business card it says "heartbreaker"
and printed on both sides of the fortune cookie it said
"not your business, move on move on"
stitching holes in my cheekbones, I
haven't got the heart to put up walls
haven't got the nerve to break them down
still painting you into my sunflowers and I am
so wary when I scrape elbows
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 6:33 AM UTC
I keep writing the spaces between heartbeats,
I keep touching the things that aren't real,
I keep saying how I'm going to change into something,
I keep erasing the lines that I've written before,
and when will I write for myself.
it takes skyscrapers filled with polaroids
it takes little white lies and telegraphs
it takes reflective puddles of gasoline
it takes armfuls of daisies and paisley print napkins
it takes princes and paupers and slurpees and silver
plated bracelets and philosophical books and memories
of people sitting on cracked green-brown bus seats
it takes things I knew and throws them away; it takes crispy hot nights
when cheekbones are sweating and boys who know nothing
of what they want filling their hearts up with and euros in pennies and sitting
on six clouds of old medications and basements with just too much dust.
it's a matter of time,
it's matter of perspective,
it's a snapshot hold-back parallel circle of constant irrevocable dimensions of porch swings
and merry go rounds undeniably irritatingly provokingly making me sick.
swish swish go cassette tapes I keep within reach
I can pull out their insides and stretch out the tape to reach to the moon
past the treetops and over the sun and into my head while I sleep.
someday I'll tinker with those that dream nothing,
and someday I'll write for myself.
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 6:32 AM UTC
one o'clock in the morning
switch switch clack clack
there's a train and it's streaming swirls of
steamy illumination
clack clack
eyelids drifting; icebergs, somewhere, melting.
there's a part of my brain and it's
it's drifting back to you
you're walking on those steaming lights
palm on palm and eyes on eyes on faces
creased and turned
with curiousity
and the beginnings of devotion
there was a past, storied; perhaps too complicated
and it's faded; I have managed to turn my head
painfully removed,
toward blue jackets being pulled on
blue and maroon
blue and maroon
you're different, and she's absolutely different
I do not know how I missed the mark
(but oh I hope that she does worse)
blue and maroon
when patched together minds of mine
**** backwards and--
I can't feel you anymore, I can only think
so maybe this is better
blue and maroon
he's getting better; he's not perfect in the same way
but you weren't either in a big way
his faults don't rattle my teeth in my head
and blister my fingertips completely out of bitterness
my eyes don't bleed of acid when he strikes an ill-planned chord
you're gone
and I am staring at this train
eyelids drifting
thinking of blue and maroon
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 6:30 AM UTC