have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?*
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 6:47 PM UTC
I keep telling myself that if I lay here long enough something's gonna swallow me and it's not because my heads been somewhere else lately it's because I sleep on the floor. Even when I don't. I sleep on the floor. The mattress has holes because mattresses get holes sometimes when you don't have blankets to cover them and you're too cold to put the cigarette out on anything other than yourself or what you have to sleep on now. Last year I'd spend every day in bed with a little bag full of drugs and a map to the bathtub just in case I forget what I took two seconds ago because I think it happened yesterday and I take more. And then I'm shaking, not because I'm cold this time. I'm seizing and nobody is home because everybody leaves me for preachers or church or a campfire or someone prettier. This part is foggy. I remember again a bathtub, an empty hotel bathtub and my mother and I say mama did you leave the door open on purpose and she says I went to church. She went to church. She went to church. Bathtub. I sleep there. Even though we are in a hotel I sleep in the bathtub because I like the way my anxiety sounds when it echoes. I like to hear it. Play it back. Memory. Back to the only house I've ever lived in alone. I'm seizing. I stop. I hear you. I somehow forget that it's 4 in the morning. It's my birthday now, nobody knows but it's my birthday now, teen years behind me but still a teen year drug addiction and you tell me to look out the window so I do. And the sky's on fire. I don't fall asleep again for three days but the sky's on fire. And so am I. And so are you. And I don't want to go back to the place I go to when I see the faces but I put myself here. I push and push and push and then I act surprised when something falls off the edge. I'm alone now. Even when I'm not. I'm alone.
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 6:41 PM UTC
She will brush against your thigh and pretend that she didn't, and she'll look you in the eyes and tell you she likes them. She will take the band out of your ponytail because she likes your hair long, she will let you listen to her favorite song and it will get stuck in your head. She will kiss your lips until they are numb and she will hold your hands until they go numb too. Don't watch the sunset with her, because you won't be able to watch it again without missing the smell of her perfume. Don't make her call you by your nickname, because afterwards you won't be able to hear it. Your heart will be heavy and so will your head but just remember you were beautiful before he said so.
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 6:31 PM UTC
I am my fathers daughter.
I know this because he tells me every time he's drunk or every time I'm drunk
I think it started when my mother left
skipped town with the preacher
left me shaking in the bathroom holding my knees like a bad taste in my mouth
this is family
this is coming home or the lack of coming back
this is making toast for your mom when she's had too much wine and somehow ends up where it all began, in the apartment that was once hers but has since switched ownership
this house is not a home
without a mother
this house is not a home without the fathers daughter
we become glue for those who cannot become sober
we become wall, ball and chain, we become our fathers at such a young age we forget how to be anything besides drunk
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 6:25 PM UTC
when you left i was swallowed by silence. i think my heart could be heard beating against my rib cage in the next town. i was tired. i was tired of not having a home. i was tired of comparing the girls i met at parties to you. their lips didn't taste the same. they smelled like fruit and their hands were sticky. i miss your hands. they make me feel safe. i have not felt safe since the day i was born but when i'm with you, i do. i want you to know that the ghost of you follows me wherever i go and it told me that it's never leaving. i asked it how to go home and it opened it arms wide and i realized what home is. you are home. i've been knocking for months, my knuckles are starting to bleed, please let me in.
Apr 18, 2015
Apr 18, 2015 at 10:41 AM UTC
i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear
Apr 18, 2015
Apr 18, 2015 at 10:26 AM UTC
look at yourself, remember that time you swore you'd never cry over a person and you said nobody could ever break your heart? look at yourself now, look at what you've become--on the cold hard floor sobbing, begging for something to take away the pain at 2AM. Do you remember the time you swore you'd never **** your sadness with white lines and lighters? look at yourself now, one more flame, two more lines, three more hits. remember when you would cry about a paper cut in 4th grade? look at yourself now, desperately searching for a sharp object to draw blood from your skin. you became the person you swore you'd never become and that, my friend, is the tragedy of living.
Apr 18, 2015
Apr 18, 2015 at 10:19 AM UTC
You were losing your ****
Over some stupid homework
(*"No, not homework, study!
You need to study too!"*)
You were unaware
That I had been sulking
About a body
Not matching a mind
I was paralysed in my bed
And you were helpfully telling me
All about my laziness
All about my life
Or there lack of
Well, I haven't been motivated
To do much lately
Other than ransack my room
For possible compressors
But in the end
You only wanted
To compress my mind
My "mindset"
You say that you love me
And you believe yourself
But do I?
Oh, of course I do
But I can not tell you
How good it feels
To hear them say my name
And mean it
It rolls off of his tongue
Skips out of her lips
And I feel at peace
I feel at home
Funny how I feel the least at home
With family
But what's a family without love?
Unconditional love?
If you love me
Let me go
I promise that I will return
As long as you let me blossom
You see
You fell in love with a caterpillar
Mistook it for a worm
I'm tired of being so pink
It's time to set me free
Cacoons can not be paused
They're created with a purpose
I'm afraid that this time
The changes are irreversible
Yes, I am going to change
But when that butterfly appears
Before your tear-filled eyes
You must realise
That it's still me
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 7:36 PM UTC
missing u is like rebuilding my childhood home after it has been destroyed by bombs instead of relief—my clothes that you sent back to me are still sitting on my doorstep, they probably still smell like you—please come back and get them and while you're here let yourself inside and come to the wine cellar and tell me you never stopped loving me
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 9:02 PM UTC
do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me
Mar 21, 2015
Mar 21, 2015 at 9:03 PM UTC