I’ll kiss you still
On your way out the door
I’ll let this love **** me
If it’s all I’m living for
Were you ever mine?
Or just a figment, a dream:
A promise of goodness and freedom
In the empty echoes of me
Can I still touch you
In the bright candlelight?
And better still in the darkness
When I peer into the night
I think I’m breaking
I think I’m your mistake:
The piece to the wrong puzzle,
The thing you have to break
Can you ever love me
The way I need you to?
Or you could just hold me
Until I melt into you
Don’t make me beg
For you to just stay,
Though I know you
And you’ll just leave anyway
Dec 2, 2020
Dec 2, 2020 at 7:30 PM UTC
sometimes i trick my body into becoming something else something unrecognizable
i tell it to sleep peacefully or to remember the embrace of a friend long gone
often the body becomes a symbol of what was lost
a friend a childhood a reason i tell myself the bruises are just autographs or love notes they never stay but i convince my body to feel them still
is this desperation or just another species of grief?
i have discovered so many that i’ve run out of names
“crying on the side of the highway overpass”
or “a sound i did not recognize as my own until months later”
or “a dream i had once but wish for still every night”
or “picturing his broken hands folded over a lifeless belly covered by a worn football sweatshirt”
sometimes i believe in ghosts i was taught to fear the sacrilegious but i lost faith since
january has been ten months long the chill follows me no matter how far i run
sometimes i trick my body into becoming something else but mostly i trick it into becoming an unremarkable hollow thing
Nov 13, 2019
Nov 13, 2019 at 8:45 PM UTC
Night time becomes a hymn in itself,
sleep a prayer I have long forgotten.
My hands clenched in a fist,
crinkling the prayer card until
his smile folds in half
like that miserable metal frame.
I un-crinkle and smooth quickly,
taking his face in the palm of my hand
and look again to his sleeping body.
I weep. Silently. My prayers
are just a string of vowels:
no god or heaven ever mentioned.
There is only sleep and
please wake.
There is no waking for me or for him.
There is only the wrinkled prayer card
and one last glance before I turn away
and resume the journey home.
Mar 18, 2019
Mar 18, 2019 at 11:10 AM UTC
Forward the crowd marches
toward their god. He is
not mine. No god of mine
lets his creations bleed
themselves dry.
My God sheds a tear this night,
lets it roll down His cheek,
down the neck,
down like this city.
Stray dogs whining lullabies or hymns,
wolves' teeth flickering
in torchlight.
What boy ever cried out for this.
Not I. Not I the girl
with a tendency
to catch fire,
not I girl with a fear of breaking.
Forward the crowd marches
until the blood dries.
The rain pours from God's chin and
we pretend to cleanse ourselves of sin.
The dogs and wolves alike
shake their fur.
How easy it must be to call ourselves human.
How hard it must be to admit ourselves animals.
My God says
He created us to fill something:
anything but this.
The crowed marches forward
until the torches are swallowed by torches.
What human, what animal, what god
lets a good city burn.
What color must every creation bleed
to admit ourselves just that.
Nov 1, 2017
Nov 1, 2017 at 7:31 PM UTC
Mom says I entered the world blue unmoving like a cracked starling egg I entered the world without a sound though Mom says she saw the noise
Each time we drive past the hospital I am reminded of how much it cost to keep me here I think my parents want their money back I think I want to stop being blue
Last summer Mom cried when she saw it: a baby robin fallen from its nest, still pink and fleshy — not blue, still moving — and it cried for her I could barely hear it but Mom saw the noise She listened for a moment more then smiled
Something inside me went cold as we walked away to the sound of eggshells cracking
Sep 28, 2017
Sep 28, 2017 at 11:39 PM UTC
do you feel the god in this room / can you feel jesus watching us / from the piece around your neck / your cologne tangled in the air / breathe / can a body ever be more than just that / can we ever be more than just this / god says not now / a prayer i used to know so well hanging from your teeth / you monster you wolf with a smile you sinner / you ripped the holy parts from my body / left a god shaped hole in my chest / i close my eyes and pray / do you feel the god in this room / this cathedral burning / our bodies covered in ash and cologne / breathe / we never have to be more than just this
Sep 28, 2017
Sep 28, 2017 at 11:31 AM UTC
if the body is a vessel
i carry you with me everywhere
through the rain and across the oceans
i carry you
because you are all this vessel has to keep
from drowning
let your hands pull me up from the holy water
kiss me in spite of sunday
kiss me in spite of everything
breathe life back into this body
breathe into this sail i hold
take me anywhere but up
kiss me in spite of heaven
kiss me to find it
let this love hit your jawbone and crack
the stained glass
blue and red and gold reflecting
on our uncovered bodies vessels
two lights burning despite the rain
despite the storm brewing in the distance
i carry you
send me to sea
send me to see more
than this brown-gray confessional
i carry you with me everywhere
through the church and up the aisle
i carry you
because you are all this vessel has to keep
from sinking
Sep 26, 2017
Sep 26, 2017 at 6:16 PM UTC
I.
Everything breaks in the winter, even you. Your words will form like shapeless prayers, your hands folded into a rock you threw against the stained glass, your body a silhouette of begging. There, in a cathedral of snow, you will wish for spring. You will wish to be soaked in May, to grow flowers from the dirt under your nails. You will pray for another chance at sunlight, another chance to dance in the rain. You never wanted to disappoint six-year-old you, but here you are, eighteen and trembling, eighteen and doubting. Some nights you find yourself curled up like a fist at the foot of your bed trying to find an easier way to exist. In January your footsteps will be slow as the dawn and you will finally learn there is no easy way.
II.
When you were nine, you caught a butterfly in your hands and felt its wings drum against your cupped palms. Years later, as his fingers flit up and down your back, you will be reminded of how sometimes you must let beautiful things go simply because they are beautiful. And this notion will carry you back. Back to your eighth summer, back to the fireflies you caught in a plastic water bottle, the fireflies who needed scissor-popped holes to breathe, the fireflies you set free so they could make light. It was then you realized that some stars can be held but never kept. And now, as you fall asleep at night, somewhere in the world a child reaches for the moon but ends up with a broken-winged firefly. In your dreams you will reach out for her but never touch.
III.
I ask that September be good to you and you be good to everything else.
IV.
October broke you open like a question
and you found an answer composed
entirely of words
that will never come.
Dusk is a language
you have become fluent in
but refuse to speak aloud:
a conversation solely between
you & the silence.
V.
Now you find yourself back inside your home built cathedral, an unanswered prayer frozen into the cracks at the sides of your mouth. You move like a broken-winged bird in the heart of winter: a sparrow incapacitated by its own song, a white noise falling through the air like snow. Here you are again, curled up like a fist angry at everything, a swear forming in the back of your throat but freezing there. Not even in the darkest months can you convince yourself to abandon the hope of light. So you stay, silent as the spring and still as the dawn, and remember seventeen.
Sep 10, 2017
Sep 10, 2017 at 11:48 AM UTC
we must not forget how often a child is not a child,
how often a spit-soaked handshake means:
"i'm trusting you not to **** this up"
and then suddenly, as sudden as the cutback of a razor scooter
(may god protect those in low-top sneakers),
everything is all sorts of ****** up
(including us)
because in this life, in this interstice between birth and death,
we are dastardly
we are cowards,
afraid of singing in public and laughing out loud,
too good for a daydream or two
we forget how to be youthful
(in truth, i disappoint the past me all the time),
forget how to keep pinky promises
and we most often forget that it is us
who cause a child to no longer be a child.
Aug 31, 2017
Aug 31, 2017 at 6:30 PM UTC
in this poem I remember how it happened
how the sky broke over our backs and
how we kissed the rain instead of each other
we live in this story
because I know of no other place to put us
except fiction
we belong here
in this poem all the pieces come back together the way they got undone
in this poem you and I become whole again
I'm keeping this promise to you
even if you forgot about it
and I know you did
and I know you also forgot my birthday
or my number
whichever hurts less when I have to explain that you didn't call on my 18th
in this poem I finally understand
you cannot fill a body riddled with holes
you cannot love a heart that beats for another
in this poem I lie about the way we touched each other
in this poem I tell myself it went deeper than skin
I did not know how to fix you
and in this poem I apologize for it
in this poem I pretend you loved me back
but only in this poem
Aug 23, 2017
Aug 23, 2017 at 10:04 PM UTC