through space and time
your thoughts like rockets,
red hot, misguided, overfunded
too busy orchestrating, calibrating, hypothesizing, re-caffeinating
stringing errant thoughts and business plans and lines of code like children's macaroni, haphazard and fervent and
you don't pay attention to anything
not the groceries, the gasoline, the grime
not quiet, murmured, shrieking, spat out reminders
not the sunlight moving through the trees
not your birthday, the laundry, your mother
not my face in the morning, hands reaching
not the directions, not your appointments or morning meetings
not the wishes and dreams I murmur into your pillow
not our dog, water bowl clattering and bone dry
eight years past and the rage blisters my palms white hot
some wicked amalgamation, a spiteful frankenstein
mothering until your skin is smooth, peaceful
unmarred by sounds of pleading
begging, echoing
and even if the noises reached an unwavering pitch
past rooftops and crowns of trees
it would not matter
for you don't pay attention
are you now?
Mar 12, 2024
Mar 12, 2024 at 9:47 PM UTC
I didn't realize that I had missed the rabbits so
til I nearly stumbled over one in the dark and dew
impossibly still and also bounding with movement, vibrating
a tenacious anxiety reflected back to me in more than one
lost, drunken, exasperated moment
memories inevitably left in backseats and waterlogged journals
the thorny irony of holding fervently what this life means to me
and for me
knowing I've forgotten nearly most of it
to trauma
and to time
why would I tuck away the times I've made myself the image of my parents?
why cherish and return to the slur of dysfunction and imbalance
why build myself on the moments I broke upon
each falter is palmed inside me
slick and pressed with dust
the life of every love and bond
I can't release
for fear that I will sink into the sky
for fear that I've only ever been a reflection
is it empathy? maybe it's a pervasive fear of abandonment
as you cannot leave me if you need me
as you cannot fear me if you trust me
as you cannot without me
and I, you
Apr 9, 2021
Apr 9, 2021 at 12:09 AM UTC
cuff my lips like the bile
you keep biting your tongue around
wrap up my limbs, painted pink
squeezing out the dissonance
and defiance,
oozing
the lengths you scrape my skin
sting like last week's argument
my throat's too wound to tell you
the soft you won't touch
burns
drenched and tripping over again for every man
who's set me on fire to keep his idea of my form alive
the sear of distaste like apathy
the bones of those who suffocated me with their suffering
don't fit inside this body anymore
i am bursting, every seam a corner to turn
sunlit, anxious, promising
watch me rewrite this flesh
like a salve
watch me reclaim this life
like salvation
Jul 5, 2020
Jul 5, 2020 at 8:15 PM UTC
lied to by heavy hands
grown rough in forests
brilliant and expecting
flowers, red and seizing
the belief of something
not yet broken
a body blooms and asks
of the deception
only once
like fire, final
a disease made of
will and a suffering
that stings when
it should steep
tomorrow I call
and speak of poets
grasping at birds
Jan 25, 2020
Jan 25, 2020 at 8:15 PM UTC
i am not made to be the counterpart to your fantasy
slotting in where you see me necessary
falling in line like a shadow,
substance held only in light of your form
i am not made bent at the altar of your suffering
stagnated by the sulfur at your mouth
pleading, pushing,
i am not made to be waiting
for your apathy to dissipate
into twitching palms
i am not made of you
not woven of your neuroses
not built from your judgement
not felled by your weaknesses
you want someone to be you, fit you, please you, hold you, soothe you, be you, temper you, cherish you, enrage and excite you, be you, be you, be you
i am not made by your hands,
nor the sin of any before you
i am not made to be suffocated
in the shape of the woman
you want to hold
Dec 14, 2019
Dec 14, 2019 at 3:35 PM UTC
wind does sweep
as your lipstick melts
from my cheeks.
and we walked and the sky was
bursting bright above our heads
in the darkness
i fell into you like a warm bath,
washing off
you feed me cool, fleshy fruits
and taste the juice at the
corners of my lips
you settle into my soul,
see me at my disarray,
my concern and shaking bravado,
at my too much.
your words catch between mine like a
gasp
you kiss me with
a power as if you're
telling me
we're both going
to be okay
Dec 3, 2019
Dec 3, 2019 at 1:12 AM UTC
I bought you the last meal we’ll ever share together,
a far cry from all the other food pressed between our lips.
quietly shuffling damp twenties from my pocket
amidst your insistence to proceed otherwise
three months and twenty two days shy of our anniversary
I don’t have the kind of money you’d like me to
my bank account is empty and
hemorrhaging a nine hundred dollar debt to you.
you’re flicking silver cards between your fingertips
tongue like gravel
all I’ve got is cash
the day I leave you, I lie in bed naked
alternating my excursions between brushing my teeth and ********
sometimes both, at the same time
like I’m cleansing the filth from all my crevices
clearing out the decay and rot
It’s poetic to think of your absence
like the gap left after a rotting tooth
pungent and expectant
but in reality clearing my bowels
or the spaces between my molars
makes no difference to the dark
cavern that lives inside me
a space with no sharp corners or dead ends
but an endless death
one I know too well
and spent too many wet nights
trying to force upon you
alone in the dust and clatter I succumb to it
unable to distinguish between
the sore of an infection
and the sear of a wound
Dec 3, 2019
Dec 3, 2019 at 12:39 AM UTC