Golden hour turns to dusk
And thoughts of you begin to pile up
I think about your lips and your hands
and the way you used to say my name
I came to try and clear my mind
to look at tall, golden grass and the winter sea
listen to the wind and the gulls cry
I think about your eyes and your shoulders
and the way your fingers felt running through my hair
I came to try and erase your name from my heart
But all I can think about is you
and your laugh and the smell of paint
and the way the sand felt beneath our feet
Dec 4, 2018
Dec 4, 2018 at 11:50 AM UTC
I smoke until I can feel nothing
Because it is better than feeling everything
That's what it is. Everything
My heart is like my head
A thousand different thoughts, shifting and twisting
Changing, over and over again.
And I feel everything.
Always overwhelming, endless emotions
That never dissipate, but only build
My body is too small to hold all of this
It shouldn't be possible
I'm bone weary
Exhausted,
I'm stuck in a current and I can't get out
Wave after wave after wave and I can't catch my breath
The world is spinning above me
And nothing will still
I feel everything
So I smoke until I can feel nothing
Dec 4, 2018
Dec 4, 2018 at 11:47 AM UTC
I woke up thinking about you
In the way the afternoon sun filtered through the clouds
Painting the autumn leaves gold
I looked at the late lavender skies
And saw something magical
When I think of magic and miracles,
I think of you
Dec 4, 2018
Dec 4, 2018 at 11:42 AM UTC
He's got strong, sure hands. Steady with wide palms. My hands always shake, never settle. Twitch and tap and vibrate with an energy I've always struggled to calm. All of me is kind of like that.
I didn't love him, yet. But I can admire art when I see it.
Dec 4, 2018
Dec 4, 2018 at 11:41 AM UTC
You’re licking your lips
And you’re loosening your collar
And I’m trying not to feel like the world is ending
Dec 4, 2018
Dec 4, 2018 at 11:13 AM UTC
There was a fake sunflower stapled to the corner of the cabinet where you first entered; my mother had banged her head on it in her twenties, and my Babcia took the initiative to cover it up from there on. The pots, rusted, and old, and dating back forty years, collected dust atop the fridge. A creaky, old, loud fridge that smelled permanently of kielbasa and applesauce, the light flickering inside, and it stood about five feet too tall for me. Before it, sat a rug, threads pulling loose and the faded face of a Great Dane looking up at you inquisitively. I used to sit on the island, not the kind you eat breakfast at nowadays. The surface was an obstacle course of splinters and softened wood that threatened to split, and the various, torturous tools my Babcia implemented upon her doughs and meats. It smelt like cigarettes, and cider, and all-spice year round; it used to make me dizzy. With the turning of the leaves, returned the headiness of cinnamon as my Babcia boiled sticks in a *** on the corner wood-burning stove, a reminder of times past. The back door that led to the garden never hung correctly, and whined with use every time it opened, whether from the wind or one of us. Dirt, weeds, and leaves were tracked in; galoshes more of a decoration beside the door than ever used practically. I cut my finger once on the pasta maker that was ******* into the counter beside the sink; one of these industrial farmhouse sinks that never managed to **** down the bread crumbs and corn all the way. I had been playing with my cousin’s power rangers in it, much to his dismay. They never were the same after I made them go for a swim. The cookies, usually oatmeal, were kept in a cracked, porcelain rooster that sat strict and unyielding next to the window; more sunflowers there as well, this time on the curtains that were stained despite how many times they’d been washed. I was never very tall, but I was good at climbing. Even in my dresses. And with feet blackened from the garden, I would struggle onto any available surface in that kitchen, and watch as my Babcia worked, knuckles dried and cracked as her hands mercilessly kneaded dough; whether it be for breads, pies, or pretzels. She would coat the pretzel dough in cinnamon sugar and feed me tiny pieces of it, and with a sip of her hard cider to wash it down, I was spoiled rotten in that kitchen. Despite the dust, the rust, the dirt, the clutter; it was my tiny kingdom, with an overloaded dishwasher, wooden spoons that met my backside more often than I prefered, and an ever boiling kettle. I can remember the way the sun would shine through on August nights, just before dinner started at 6:30 pm, the way the evening would cast the entire room gold and green, Stevie Nick’s voice gritty and soft, and the entire house smelled of pierogies and sausage. The adults would be bustling to and fro, and I would pretend to help, when really all I was doing was stealing bits of biscuits and gravy for me and the dogs. I can remember the stillness of early morning, the wafting scent of coffee that flooded the room like steam, I can remember struggling to reach the jam, the familiar ding of the toaster, and my Grandfather’s hands, fat and calloused, pushing me up until I was settled onto the island, and the windows opened as he smoked, the blackest cup of coffee you’d ever seen in one hand, and the gray of his hair turning white in the light of the rising sun. If I closed my eyes, I am able to envision it all. Each speck of dust that danced in the air, every berry stain that became useless to try and remove due to my clumsiness, the stacks of Blues Clues applesauce that took up the bottom shelf of the fridge, and the sight of the vegetable garden just through the back door, bountiful and green and ready to harvest.
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 4:40 PM UTC
stay away from men who call themselves
Lone Wolf
brittle bones starved from hunger
blood in their fur and claws blackened with death
men who think they need no one
whose strength dwindles without a pack
desperate and angry and volatile
molotov cocktails that threaten destruction
at every bark, every bite
Lone Wolf, he says
alone in the dark,
limbs frozen from the snow
his cries going unanswered
and when others howl in the distance
he turns his back
empty of touch and love
long abandoned to the night
to the storming seas and the cliffs that echo
with falling boulders and broken branches
stay away from the lone wolves
who snarl at the light
for they will eat you alive at the first chance
steal your life in hopes it will keep them warm
but it will fade and they will be alone again
until the next comes along and tries to lick their wounds clean
stay away from the lone wolves
because they will devour you whole
and blame you for their despair
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 3:23 PM UTC
He won’t get another chance this time.
I’ll mourn.
Let him haunt me in fragments of memories.
A ghost. A whisper on the wind.
I need to burn sage. Perform an exorcism. Expel him and his voice and his smile, from my mind and my heart.
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 1:59 PM UTC
An ode to honest men, to men with strength
Men who heal and nurture
Men with magic in their blood and love in their hearts
Feminists, and creatives, and artists
Romantics who look out at a rainy city and see beauty amidst the dark and despair
Men who do not run from what they feel, what they think
Who they are
Who fan the fires of their passion but not let it destroy what they yearn for, but rather bring warmth and light into the lives of those who need it most
Men who think of women as goddesses, queens, suns and stars and moons
Who see women in the white foam of a crashing wave or in the deep, thickened roots of a tree hundreds of years old
Men who can take a women who is cautious, skittish, buried inside herself, struggling to claw through the dirt, men who take a shovel and find her
Grab her hand in theirs and lift them to the air
Who feed the souls of their friends and their lovers with kindness and tenderness
Men who aren't afraid of a woman with a roar, with long claws, and a sharpness in her eyes
Men who stand beside the wolf of every woman and feel graced by her howl
Clarity in their words and truth in their touch
Men who love without inhibitions, who can find intimacy in the quiet moments between friends
This is an ode to the honest men, to men who grow like trees
Up and up and up, stretching their branches and bringing life to the world around them
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 1:57 PM UTC
To the west was the city, towers of steel and concrete that dwarfed even the tallest man, and to the east was the end, where the air turned thick with the scent of hay and soil until you came to an ocean that stretches so far it seemed to fall off the edge of the earth. The salt burned your nose and turned your hair brittle, knotting and tangling it in the breeze that swept off the sea.
But I was not there at the end of the world, instead I had gone north to the sound. Following the twisting roads whose route I had memorized as a child. The radio playing Carole King as though an ode to my mother and the summers she drove under these same canopied trees, past houses of hydrangeas and dahlias until she reached the beach.
I sat along the fence that separated the public from the rich— where lilacs grew thick through the hedges and all I could see were the tiny huts of pale pinks and yellows and blues, a distant memory of the 60s.
The coast was a rainbow of umbrellas and mingled among the sound of the gulls crying and the waves hitting the shore was the laughter of the children and the motors of passing boats.
The cliffs of a nearby port town curved around me, a barrier from the rest of the island. And if I squinted, the grey line of Connecticut seemed almost within reach.
Cirrus clouds lined the sky, intermingling with the foggy blue that melded seamlessly into the water. I felt as thought I was underwater at times, the haze from the heat and the sun blinding as I looked up through the blue to the world above.
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 1:51 PM UTC