This is the touch and go.
The breath before the giveaway.
The feeling of every
ghost dancing from the
pit of your stomach through
the vines of your throat
telling everyone that
you are letting them go.
They won’t want you to leave.
I can promise you this.
But you’ve been burning
without fuel for too long
The sun licked your
cheekbones this morning
and you wanted to know
what it meant to be only light
to be dying star
to be collapsing supernova in
the galaxy of terminal illness.
It is okay to say you
want to give up.
I call it wanting to go home.
I call it being tired of
having calloused hands
desperately fighting time.
Fighting the inevitable.
We are not a rainstorm of lost faith.
We are a baptism of acceptance.
Goodbye can rush out
of your open mouth
whenever you’re ready, darling.
I will cradle an “I love you”
to sail down the riverbed of
whichever afterlife you choose.
This
This is how I will always
find a way to be
next to you.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 12:32 AM UTC
I think I’ve forgotten the sound of your voice…
Well, at least when it’s saying my name.
Last night,
I dreamed myself back in New York City
and woke this morning smelling like
Thompson Street after it rains.
I woke up drenched in the scent of us making love.
Baby, would you believe me if I said,
I think I’ve forgotten how to love?
Well, at least when it’s someone whose not you.
I give myself away so easily now
because I expect everyone to let me go.
Please don’t think I’m blaming you for this-
I know some things can’t be helped.
I’m not saying I want us back…
my mouth is still an open wound
and I wear my blood for lipstick.
Not all “I miss you’s”
mean come home…
Sometimes they’re asking
“why’d you leave to begin with?”
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 12:32 AM UTC
A year later, I would still fold myself into anything you wanted…And that’s the problem… when you have a body made of paper, you start seeing how easy it is to crease yourself over…it becomes easy to forget who you ever were before you learned how to bend.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 12:31 AM UTC
Going to an all girls school,
the one thing that kept us
outside the gates of adulthood
was chain linked inside our mouths
Braces
made us all feel like we
were made of rusted nails
and anything that said we
couldn’t be touched
The day
a classmate had her braces removed
was the day she became a woman
**** a bat mitzvah or a period
An inviting smile gleaming
like ivory castles in a
new Facebook profile picture
meant she became everything
that was glory
By my junior year,
I was the only one left
with a mouth brimming
full of metal
I was just as awkward
as my smile
Grew so accustomed to
feeling alone in a sea of crowded
that I let myself become faceless
Avoided school dances
because I was convinced
my skin didn’t want to be held
But in all of this,
I ironically felt small for the first time
the day my braces came off
Felt myself sink in the
abundance of “Oh my god,
you’re so pretty now”
On a date with my middle school
crush, he licked the ridges
of my teeth as we kissed
Told me I became
“so hot” by senior year
This was when I realized
for the past 8 years
no one had ever
touched me with purpose
As if the day my teeth
became aligned with
everyone’s idea of beauty
then I was worthy of being stared at
Suddenly,
modeling agencies wanted
to freeze frame all the firefly
sun bleeding out my face
My mouth became so fuckable
boys would tell me how good
I’d be at swallowing all of them
Girls, became nothing
but the chatter of crows
telling people pretty was
all my womanly bones
were good for
I started wanting to pull out my teeth,
one by one, hang them around
my neck then ask: “How much of a
wishing well does my smile
look to you now?”
So, don’t call me pretty
Call my mouth ******
Call me an open wound
made of honesty
I am everything mangled and crooked
I am everything vicious
I am the gap in my teeth
headgear couldn’t fix
Tell me I am a broken violin bow
when I speak my mind
I’ll tell you to shut up
as I become a
symphony of graceless rage
My words
a deliverance of
God’s best sermon
My soul
is the brightest firework
your open hands can try
catching but never will
When we’re taught as girls that
the only thing to aspire to as a
woman is having a desirable face
It makes my body want to wrap
itself in all that is ugly
So don’t ever call me pretty
As if my smile burning
golden like its own sun
depended on your compliments
I have always been night sky
crawling her way to morning
I have drowned here
I have survived here
I am nothing but a holy resurrection
of self love standing before you
knee deep in past insecurities
So, Remember that the next time you
want to compliment me
and call me miracle instead
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 12:30 AM UTC
Going to an all girls school,
the one thing that kept us
outside the gates of adulthood
was chain linked inside our mouths
Braces
made us all feel like we
were made of rusted nails
and anything that said we
couldn’t be touched
The day
a classmate had her braces removed
was the day she became a woman
**** a bat mitzvah or a period
An inviting smile gleaming
like ivory castles in a
new Facebook profile picture
meant she became everything
that was glory
By my junior year,
I was the only one left
with a mouth brimming
full of metal
I was just as awkward
as my smile
Grew so accustomed to
feeling alone in a sea of crowded
that I let myself become faceless
Avoided school dances
because I was convinced
my skin didn’t want to be held
But in all of this,
I ironically felt small for the first time
the day my braces came off
Felt myself sink in the
abundance of “Oh my god,
you’re so pretty now”
On a date with my middle school
crush, he licked the ridges
of my teeth as we kissed
Told me I became
“so hot” by senior year
This was when I realized
for the past 8 years
no one had ever
touched me with purpose
As if the day my teeth
became aligned with
everyone’s idea of beauty
then I was worthy of being stared at
Suddenly,
modeling agencies wanted
to freeze frame all the firefly
sun bleeding out my face
My mouth became so fuckable
boys would tell me how good
I’d be at swallowing all of them
Girls, became nothing
but the chatter of crows
telling people pretty was
all my womanly bones
were good for
I started wanting to pull out my teeth,
one by one, hang them around
my neck then ask: “How much of a
wishing well does my smile
look to you now?”
So, don’t call me pretty
Call my mouth ******
Call me an open wound
made of honesty
I am everything mangled and crooked
I am everything vicious
I am the gap in my teeth
headgear couldn’t fix
Tell me I am a broken violin bow
when I speak my mind
I’ll tell you to shut up
as I become a
symphony of graceless rage
My words
a deliverance of
God’s best sermon
My soul
is the brightest firework
your open hands can try
catching but never will
When we’re taught as girls that
the only thing to aspire to as a
woman is having a desirable face
It makes my body want to wrap
itself in all that is ugly
So don’t ever call me pretty
As if my smile burning
golden like its own sun
depended on your compliments
I have always been night sky
crawling her way to morning
I have drowned here
I have survived here
I am nothing but a holy resurrection
of self love standing before you
knee deep in past insecurities
So, Remember that the next time you
want to compliment me
and call me miracle instead
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
The first time someone called me a poet
it was in the cramped back hallway of a party in early July
heat rising between our ****** spaces
sweat collecting at the base of my brow to keep anxiety at bay
I listen as someone who I could barely call an acquaintance describe me to a boy I just met:
“she is an amazing writer, trust me, she’s so cool”
As if me using metaphors for antidepressants
and words as bandages for wounds
was reason to make me worthy to get to know beyond my first name
to pin my feet onto a pedestal I didn’t ask to stand on to begin with
I press autopilot in my muscles,
mechanically flip my hair,
split my lips into a half-ass smile,
****** my hand,
and let my laugh ring with the music.
Little does everyone know I am the broken jukebox
with a disappearing voice.
I hide behind love and at 19, I wrote “What High School History Taught Me”
It was for you
you, the NYU junior with a mouth that clung onto vowels
and whose fingertips could read the braille embedded in my skin
You loved chasing storms,
I was almost named after a hurricane,
and this was how we were born after Hurricane Sandy-
it was never a question how we found comfort in destruction
But I still remember telling you
that I wanted to love you forever even if you didn’t stay to find out
And ever since I spit that
men come to me looking for their taste of mystery
for their chance to be immortalized
They don’t know I only speak in train station
and everybody is always a few minutes too late
No one has gotten the chance to get too close
because it’s never romantic to **** the girl who makes love to her own sadness every night
I’ve stopped seeing the fire in my poetry like most strangers do
because to them
my pain is pretty
my heartache is dressed in a bow so
they can all sleep better at night knowing
some 20 year old girl in California understands them
better than she understands herself.
I have been singing in a language I never fully understood
because I am the girl who attaches my reflection to a man
whose memory I still keep prisoner in my mind
and this is how I hide from myself
this is my disappearing act
This isn’t poetry anymore
and it hasn’t been for a long time
This is the sound of survival
This is my heart leaking gunpowder and discharging bullets
Right here
on this stage
is where I understand what it feels like to choke on the gas chamber of lost dreams
Right here
is a dusky New York City apartment
with a boy dressed in the mask of a man hunting me as prey
This stage is where I come home to after being at war with myself
This stage is my peace
my prayer for forgiveness once a week
Right here
is why friends from school don’t call me that much anymore
This stage
is why me and Joe broke up
This place
is why I don’t sit with my family at the dinner table no more
because why
Why share grace with those who can’t understand
how these lights I stand under make the full moon I need
to break my neck and howl at some nights
This is where I pluck the guitar strings of my throat to sing like a bluebird and slow dance with every ghost
This stage is the only place I can forklift
all the misunderstood out of my chest and force you to watch
and you
will still call it art
you
will still call it poetry
But this isn’t poetry anymore
it hasn’t been for a long time
This
is the sound of survival
This
is the sound of me using the inhale of night
just to make it to the exhale of morning.
Right here.
On this stage.
This
is where
and why
I
fight.
Mar 11, 2014
Mar 11, 2014 at 3:49 PM UTC
it doesn’t happen all at once
it happens slowly
like a flood with water rising cautiously
a quiet rebellion spilling over enemy lines with a vengeance
minute by minute, i feel it
the gravitational pull on his body moving him further away from me
my mother says 3,000 miles doesn’t mean anything,
that i will find my way back to him,
but i’m not so sure
it doesn’t happen all at once
it happens so slowly i couldn’t even see it, until it was too late
until the love waltzing in the ballroom of his chest went quiet
and everyone stopped dancing
i tell him i don’t understand
ask him how he could change his mind so suddenly
that things were fine the day before
but it doesn’t happen all at once
the earth is moving microscopic distances as we speak
and neither of him or i are in the same place as we were yesterday
Sep 20, 2013
Sep 20, 2013 at 6:22 PM UTC
-migratory birds always find their way back home, so can you
-even the dictionary is burdened by the weight of words
-there is an emptiness that comes with being forgotten, do not let it consume you
-you do not have to give yourself away just so another person can have the best of you
-the theory that every person is searching for their other half is ******** don’t ever let anyone, not even a god, tell you that you are anything less than a whole
-if you hold onto beautiful things for too long, even they can bruise you too
-each vein you trace will somehow find its way back to your heart.
-you are your own zenith.
-if you feel your past love has sunken into your bones, know that it takes seven years to grow new skin cells and that is more than enough time to become something they have never touched
-you can never save people, but you can do a **** good job of loving them even if they don’t love you
-no one, yourself included, is ever entirely alone
-you will make mistakes that feel like ****** kiss mouths just as sad as yours, you will fall asleep with bruises and ****** knuckles, lust after hate but the end of the world does not look like this…it does not look like this…i promise you
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 9:22 PM UTC
1. i am a phoenix who has spent every year of my life
burning to ashes and being painfully reborn
you knew this and threw me into the fire anyways
2. i didn’t just fall in love with you
i crashed into it
like a drunk driver who couldn’t wait for the light to turn green
and i didn’t have any insurance
3. i was always competing with
the ghost of your ex-girlfriend
and you saw her reflection in my eyes
it wasn’t a fair match from the start, was it?
4. you said i was the most lovable person you had ever met
but you couldn’t be the one to love me
i think the word you meant to use to describe me was unlovable
5. you treated my affection like ******* currency to help you sleep at night
6. i always had to butcher the truth out of your mouth
7. i wrote you my first love poem
it was called “putting you into words”
because i couldn’t ever find one word to accurately describe you
but i found it now:
*******
8. you taught me what lonely people do
how they can’t touch anything without leaving their fingerprints behind
without painting your skin in midnight
when the sun comes up you will both be on the ground again
with stomach aches and dry mouths
this is what lonely people do
they stay the night and wake up thirsty
and their only cure is drying out your canteen heart
9. ask me how many times i’ve trusted
the men with twisted fingers and crooked smiles
how many times i’ve cut my hands on their jagged edges
sharpened like a knife by pain
ask me how many times i’ve let men say my name like they’ve created me
…i will tell you i’ve lost count
10. i am a giver
who surrenders my softness to sharp teeth and sandpaper hands
i am giver
who falls in love with far too many takers
and never learned how to be both
11. i am made of forgiveness and
you broke my bones like they were empty promises
i will always be walking on someone else’s ending
and crawling over the ruins
12. if pain makes craters then my heart is the moon
13. every poem i ever wrote for you
is now a testament of how you wasted my time
14. you were the final shipwreck
that sent me reeling out into the water with my mouth wide open
i taste like seawater because there is so much inside of me that is trying to drown
15. love is the worst illusion man ever created
16. i am 19 years old
and i am entirely too young
to believe it doesn’t exist anymore (k.w)
Aug 25, 2013
Aug 25, 2013 at 6:23 PM UTC
he is going to ask you about him.
just know that it will be the first question out of his mouth
when he sees the empty parking lot look in your eyes
when you pass certain places.
be prepared to tell him. are you afraid?
one mention of his name and your mouth burns for hours afterward.
you won’t know how to talk about him. the other one.
what are you supposed to say? be honest.
tell him how your heart was a city burning to its knees when he left,
how every object you came across looked like a weapon
because it reminded you of him
tell him about the withdrawal, how you tried erasing
the taste of his lips by getting lost in the mouths of strangers
tell him what it felt like to love him,
how it was the bravest and stupidest thing you’d ever done.
you are going to choke on your own pain.
tell him you buried him next to your innocence a long time ago.
then have another drink.
when he asks you about the one who came before him,
you aren’t going to answer. you’re going to run.
the one before him taught you how to do that well (k.w)
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 6:38 PM UTC