Jessica

Feb 2018

zoie marie lynn

i told my therapist about you,
while your lips were still slathered alllll over my body.
i showed her the places we had been,
and all the things we had seen.
i told her what lies underneath that pretty
                                              pretty
skin of yours,
and i told her how i knew.
i spelt out your name as she scribbled it on her cute little clipboard,
i told her about the   first     night
and the      second
and the   fourth
and that time in the closet.
i told her everything,
i really just wanted to   get
                                                  you
                                      out
of my brain,
it didn't matter if saying these things put me in  sososo  much pain.
because you've  moved   on  so why can't i?
i told my therapist about you,
but i still can't tell you
                                           goodbye.
i know i'm  s t u p i d,
for holding on this l
                               o
                                n
                                 g,
i know it's useless,
for wishing you weren't                              gone.
but my words carry on like a heartbeat
s     l      o      w
steady
                          fast
u   s   e   d
  n    t   a   y
i   keep   keep   keep  breaking and breaking and breaking and
i told my therapist about you.

i think part of the reason why we hold onto something so tight is because we fear something that great will never ever happen twice

****
i was in so much pain when i wrote this, my lover had just left with two years of my life and i felt so so so alone. i chewed through therapists constantly, they left me behind because i was too broken to fix. i hated them all. but there was this one, this one singular human being that listened to me. she didn't flinch, she didn't look at me like i was a broken puppy left for death. she just listened. i was all over the place, but i managed to lay out my entire mind for her to dissect. and she did. she helped me so so much, and i could never repay her enough for how she has helped me. when i got home, i wrote the basics of this. it was like 12:30 when i wrote it and i couldn't sleep the next night so i decided to make this look exactly how i felt when i wrote it the night before. how my lover made me feel for so long. so i did. i was crying mountains, i was hyperventilating, i threw my phone through the wall. i put all my anger, blood, tears in each letter, each space. i put it all in there and then posted it a couple weeks later. i didn't show anyone. i just put it out there, hoping my lover would see it. but it didn't even matter cause when i woke up, the whole world saw it instead. thank you. i love you all.

#you #her #me #therapy #pain #love #gone #poetry #poets #poem

Jessica Jan 2018

Loss for Words

I want to write
I feel this so truly, so deeply,
It stifles most other feelings in my stomach, so

Why don't the words just come to me
Why is the feeling so hard to express
I can feel it in my chest, now, dying to get out
And yet the words just don't come they stay locked in my head, a jumble of letters and phrases that just don't match up
This isn't even poetry, it's just a mismatched fantasy, and I'm doing my best to follow along but I'm getting lost along the rabbit trail of my own consciousness.
So... I keep trying. I keep writing. And maybe someday I'll be able to keep up.

#nowords #writing #block #bipolar #keep #trying

Jan 2018

Brigitta Cuadros

GUILTY

At age 7, I was guilty
when I accepted an invitation
to go into the apartment of a neighbor
He smelled of beer as he groped me.

At age 10, I was guilty
when I walked home too late
because I missed the train
He popped out of the bushes
exposing himself.

At age 12, I was guilty
when my uncle forced
tongue into my mouth
because I could not
get away.

At age 14, I was guilty
when my uncle forced
me to sit on his lap
while in my bathing suit
and I ran away from home.

At age 16, I was guilty
when my uncle convinced
everyone that I was a liar
and I quit school.

At age 18, I was guilty
when I gave birth to
my first child,
because I was ignorant.

At age 20, I was guilty
when I saw the cardiologist
in the reflection of a lamp
******* and the
police laughed at my report.

At age 30, I was guilty
when my employer
trapped me in the elevator
to ***** me, because I
was his subserviant.

At age 36, I was guilty
when I earned jujitsu honors
but risked going to jail
for defending myself.

At age 70, I was guilty
when a neighbor brought
me fruit and grabbed my
breast, because I was alone.

At age 72, I am guilty
of being a ferule woman
for 50 years and for
NOT be silent!

How many times must a woman be guilty for her existence?

#meto

Jan 2018

ashley lingy

Sick

I sit in my basement.
And I watch others live their lives.
I'm not enough.
And my friends are worried.
And my family is worried.
It's happened, I'm sick again.

And then I go somewhere safe.
I feel better one day.
And better the next.
There's bad days too.
But I see tomorrow.

#bipolardisorder #bipolar #depression #sick #worry #hope

Jan 2018

Lauren Johnson

How to know you’re over him

And for the first time in forever,

I danced alone in the kitchen at 1am

without the help of alcohol

#love

Jan 2018

Kayla Flanders

fragile.

she was not fragile like a snowflake.
she was fragile like a bomb.
and i didn't know which was scarier-
her explosion or her calm.