Goosebumps bloomed on her limbs
like the plague
and this was a relief
she had been waiting for,
ever since her mother
put her hands on her
and turned an angel into a firestorm.
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 6:32 AM UTC
Colossal wings of striking,
soft white feathers
erupted from her pale shoulder blades,
divine and substantial.
Wings.
She had wings.
She hated her wings.
Daddy used to call her
his angel. But she knew
she was no angel.
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 6:31 AM UTC
I never really
believed in God
until I looked into your eyes
for the first time.
Because I swear
I have never seen anything
more transcendent and godlike
than the celestial firestorm
in your eyes,
when you see me, taciturn and stripped,
my body claimed yours.
Yours, since the first blaze
flickered inside you.
Despite your divinity,
you drove a saint to drink.
But maybe it was unintended;
it’s not your fault
your lips
taste like wine.
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 11:22 AM UTC
Behind the house with the fragmented windows
and the corroded pipes
and the cobwebs and ages under the stairs,
she buried herself
under the earth and grime
until the roots contained her decayed soul
and encased around her brittle scarred limbs.
Until the dirt crept down her windpipes,
until her tarnished lungs were suffused
with ashes and dirt.
Until roots replaced her veins and
smothered her cracked ribcage.
Behind the house with the fragmented windows,
under the grass and gravel,
that was rougher than
her mother’s dispirited retorts,
where she once capered and skipped, and never thought
would become her grave.
By the ethereal creatures she played with
in her younger and more susceptible years.
Dig up her bones but leave her soul.
Who would ever want cruel contaminated beauty
as a periphery for such a fouled soul?
It was when she stopped falling asleep on the way home,
when her nightlight ceased to make her feel safe,
when a lover’s unlawful kisses replaced her family’s amity,
when a lover’s lethal passion parted her lethal loneliness,
when home became a person and not a place,
was when she buried herself
behind the house with the fragmented windows.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 9:22 AM UTC
I woke up
with a thought of you-
so uproarious
it woke up
the whole neighborhood,
so wild it made me
sit up on my bed
at 3 a.m
coughing up storms-
and such thoughts
are enough to burn the house down.
I look up at the ceiling-
my breath jittery
and spine-less,
and the ceiling says
she's sick and tired
of hearing me
mumble your name in my sleep
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 12:41 PM UTC
Up until
a few months ago,
when anxiety
had enfolded itself
around my brittle bones,
when the innumerable
butterflies in my ribcage
had begun
to breathe their last,
when my whole body
had been a gun;
the pen and paper
in my hands were
the only safety switch,
and the poetry I would write
had been my only salvation
from the melancholia
of existence.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 11:31 AM UTC
I used to come home late,
my eyes rimmed
with sleepless nights
and my cheeks
stained with tears
and I would tug at God’s sleeve
and beg for help
and he would say “later”
but later never came
and I swear that God
reminds me of
my mother sometimes.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 11:27 AM UTC
Hurricanes erupted in my lungs
when the tips of your fingers
touched my jittering skin
and I am still sorry
that I wear my father’s disappointment
in the expensive black lingerie
you’ve seen me in,
cold and bare
with goosebumps blooming
on my brittle skin like braille,
and as you touch me
I start apologizing
for the broken home in my eyes.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 11:26 AM UTC
When I was little
my father took me to an art exhibit
and stood in front a colossal blend
of hues and tinctures and smeared philosophy
that my unadulterated mind could not calculate.
I pondered the painting
and told my father I could not understand
and he said he did not, either
with a musing look on his face
that registered his scrutiny and brainwave.
But I still could not understand how
one can be captivated by something
one does not understand.
Years later, I met you, and
I think about that painting.
And now I understand.
When I was little
and my mother was away,
my immune system battled a cough.
But I was too fragile, my body too brittle,
so I climbed the forbidden cupboard
in our kitchen
and flooded my lungs with cough syrup
and the drug took over my body
as my delicate knees quivered
and I collapsed on the cold linoleum floor.
When my father found out, he told me
not to ever take too much medicine
or anything
because too much of something is never good.
And now I understand why
they told me to stay away from you.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 11:24 AM UTC
Your eyes are so ******* captivating
and every time you blink,
it’s like a kaleidoscope
of the sweetest colors
and all our memories together.
My, oh, my,
I see microcosms of cosmos in those eyes.
Stop looking at everyone else.
Those galaxies
are
mine.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 11:23 AM UTC