Before we begin, some of you may remember this poem. Back in early summer I submitted it for a contest and have recently received word that it will be published in a book!! The finished copy is much cleaner and simpler, but here it is again in its rawest and most original form! ♡
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The softest things seem to
Slip
Past our eyes without ever a
Second Glance.

When met with a second option,
Nostalgia and Regret
BATTLE
It out, fist to the flames.

head turns to my loyal disciple, pen at ready

He tells me honest emotions,
Ragdoll plagues drenched in

Formaldehyde wet-suits.

My heart a heavy
Disco
When your loving voice cradles me.

No, not a crush.
Our towers hold relationship rules
HOSTAGE.
Prayers for another at the
Altar of our Chapel.

Castle grounds of our giggles,
Bewitched by bangles of cedar cares.
Oblong shapes, color-coded and precise
Beg to be
BLED
Into blocks of games and fun.

Postscript to entertainer

Nothing is harmful
when I'm with my Lizzy...
No glimpses of future, but an eye on the past.
But, oh but for now,
Let us bask is rosy-cheeked riots
Friend of mine.

My body is a wasteland if worn parts.
My soul is the rusted joints, holding my soul to my body...But keeping just a knocking distance from reality.
Reality is the soil upon which every anxious structure of my body is built.
To let this building crumble is to **** the last of my faith in myself and I will NOT be repaired this time around.

I can never fall again.

That's why we paint over these cracked plasters...And build on all of the rotted cores...
This building of mine BOTTLES up every bad thing going on inside of me and
PAINTS
Over it.
I must never fall because to fall is to show what's inside.
To fall is to break and never, ever recover.
So why the **** am I crumbling to the ground...

The years drifted by, a slow steady current.
A feeling, a hum beneath the surface,
always just out of reach.
Like a half-remembered song,
a color you almost saw.
Waiting for a moment, a shoe drop, something just on the tip of your tongue.
Then the sterile chill, the bright lights.
A focused tension.
Drowzy, losing blood,
Panicking.
The fear of the waiting, waiting for that
Moment.
The moment you've spent your whole life waiting for.
And then, a sound.
A raw, insistent cry.
Suddenly, the shape of the waiting
snapping into sharp relief.
Tears rolling down your face,
Muscles slumping.
This small, furious sound.
The missing piece, finally found.

Your Son's first cry.

See, here's the thing about love. Its this quiet ache that settles in your bones. Not a sharp pain, more like the constant hum of a refrigerator you can't quite tune out. And it's this wanting, this deep-down, kid-sized wanting that just yearns to be loved back, that I've learned to bury deep down.

I've always pictured it, you know? The whole daddy's girl thing. The scraped knees getting kissed better, the bad drawings stuck proudly on the fridge, the late-night talks about nothing and everything feeling like the most important thing in the world. That hand, big and calloused, swallowing mine whole, a silent promise to always care.
But the mirror, man, that **** mirror. It throws back this face, this map of features that isn't mine, not truly. It's hers. The blueprint of the woman who carved out a hollow space in his chest, a space I can't fill, no matter how hard I try.
I am a walking memory of his regrets, and I've always lived in the shadow of her mistakes.

So every time I reach, every time I lean in, hoping for that easy warmth, that unguarded smile, there's this flicker. A shadow crossing his eyes. It's not anger, not exactly. More like a reflex, a phantom limb twitching with remembered hurt.
And I get it, I do. Intellectually, at least. I’m a walking, breathing trigger. A constant rewind to a story you’d rather leave unspooled.
But this heart, this stupid, hopeful heart of mine? It doesn’t get it. It just feels the distance. The abuse that felt a little too disproportionate. The punishments that felt a little too severe. The acting out, just so you'd look at me. The careful words. The hands that stay just out of reach.

There are no big blow-ups anymore Dad, no dramatic scenes. Just this quiet, persistent absence. This knowing that I’ll always be a reminder, a living photograph of your biggest regret.
And the wanting? It just keeps humming. A low, steady note in the soundtrack of my life. A daddy’s girl in a world where that role was never cast for me. A face in the mirror, a ghost in your gaze. That’s the truth I have to live with I suppose. Yet still, even though it hurts, I still yearn for you to love me. To want to hold me. I miss what I never had.

Anxiety Crossover,
X on my throat.
A grip, fingers dig inside of my throat.
Feel a hand in my soul,
clawing.
Pulling.
Ripping out of my mouth.
I feel a '****'.
A sigh.
And my head hits my shoulder.
my shoulder rolls into my spine.
And my fingers knock on brick;
Linoleum, fingernails digging in the grout.
A wave of jerks and twitches,
And a breeze.

A rose, everblooming.
Petals swelling around their base.
Bounded by a timeline,
We sway and I bite down on a kiss.
Busted, bruised, swelling and pink.
My heart pounds itself out, aching, running a mile a minute.
A tear slips through my dry, brick wall features.
Dust in the wind, for I am as alone as I came into this world.

My phone starts to ring, and it's you and only you.
"Happy birthday to you!".
You call me by our name;
A Rose by any other name...
Except with you, I'm a rose in a sea of blue.
Skies as bright as sapphires, clouds as soft as silk.
I make a wish, I blow it out.
My tears dry up; My soul is a drought.
I'm found. I love your voice. It cradles and cares for me,
My leaves shed.

I love you. Remember that, too.
You're my first and my last-

"-Happy birthdayyyy tooooo yoouuuuuu! I love you, Rose."

And I love you, too.

☞☎
It's quite easy
To pick up
The phone...
Please?

My heart swells with the capacity to love every single person I can touch
It throbs with the smiles and laughs,
Aches with the giggles and whispers,
And it swoons with every compliment and hug.
I jump the gun every morning, sending my entire heart to all I can.
I keep to them, responding quickly.
I am a fix, expendable.
I know what it’s like to hurt! To need that smile, that hug, that giggle.
And I know how hard it is to find. So I became what I once needed,
A homing beacon. A sign that tonight, even when I wanna drown myself and end my life for good, these emotions are as temporary as a laugh.
I taught myself to love the masses, even in the face of mental discord between my mind and my depression.
I taught myself to hold a shaking, breaking body together till they mended
Even if I was hanging on by mere threads.
Because I know that I am expendable.
I do this because my heart is big.
So big it cannot hold my self-love inside but instead it can distribute it.
I depend on everyone to hold my love so I am not faced with the opportunity to love myself.
Nothing, not even my own breaking and quaking soul can stop me from building a person.
And at the end of the day, I think that helps me get by in my own catastrophic mess.

I've just created my first white bread loaves.
I've mixed every color, worn every shade.
I have pranced in foot-long heels,
Trying hard to gain a grasp...
But in mixing my yeast
Folding in my flour
letting my baby rise
and
Baking my loaves just right
I've never felt more confident in myself.
And that's a gift, eh?

The ghost of your voice, a whiskey-soaked whisper,
haunts the empty spaces between my ribs.
Your lingering presence aches like a ****** bruise.
Even in a crowded room,
your shadow dances on the periphery of my vision.
My heart, a stubborn compass,
always points towards you,
a magnetic north that leads me astray.
I build walls of indifference,
plant gardens of new affections,
but the roots of our entanglement
run deeper than any cultivated soil.
You're invasive,
Killing the light, and any hope of freedom
From your smile.
You are the siren song,
the shipwreck I yearn to return to.
The familiar ache of your absence
feels more comforting than the tentative warmth of new beginnings.
I have thought it through.
And the conclusion is a bitter surrender.
This is my fate,
to orbit your gravity,
a satellite forever lost in your orbit.
You are a toxic cycle I surrender myself to.
Unwillingness has never felt so relieving.

The cut of your fingers
+88____+880
+880____++80
++88­___+880
++88___++88
+880___++88
+­888__++880
++880_++880
++888_+++880
++8888­+++8880++88
+++8888+++8880++8888
++888++8888+++8888+80
­++88++8888++888888++88
++++++888888fx888888888
_++++++88888­88888888888
++++++++00088888888888
+++++++00008f8888888
­_+++++++00088888888
__+++++++0888f8888
Snipped like sissors through
My blooming peach.

Heart aching pull, vibrant as white splotches on the sky.
Blood slowly pools, vitality dripping like wine.
The tree where thine life prevails when mörkret har förbrukat dig.
But you aren't a tree-
You couldn't care less.
You're bleeding out the pain, focusing only on the shade.
Not quite crimson, not quite happy.
Light falls dimly on your cavity:
Brain cells begone.

Is for
Firefly
Fast reply
Frustrated guys
And...
Fields of
Flowers.

Dude: So I have a feeling that we should kiss. Is that feeling a good feeling or an incorrect feeling?

Chick: I sometimes have a feeling I could do crystal **** but then I think, 'Hmm.. Better not'.

Dude: Alright.

Milk and Honey, Sugar and Spice.
I’m calm when I breathe in my headspace, one two three.
A sip of Alice’s Sippy Cup, Delirium state of mind.
I hold my head as neon lines cross my vision.
Resilient as I am, I can’t hold long.
I’m falling, falling, gone.
And then I’m back, Honey and Milk, smelling the spices and sugars-
I’m expendable, I know. So I sip sip sip from Alice’s cup, Get high and drop, fallen angel..
I’m stuck in a paradox of disappointment.
I drown my thoughts in the devil’s temptations.
I’m the Eve from my very own garden, making friends with the fruit salad.
But you’d know, wouldn’t you?
You know.

Not a single thing in the world
Can Compare
To when my kittens sleep on me.
Oh, so soft.
Oh, so sweet.
Tip Tip Tappity, tail gone astray.
What are you dreaming, baby?
Why don't you stay?

I lounged on the deck with a mooched glass of ***,
Twilight chill enchanting my soul.
My stomach toiled with excitement and fear.
The sleepless night welded what I held dear
With the provoked thoughts of life if I were to
Disappear.
I will.
Then out of the blue, the trees begin to whistle.
Shake, scrape, shake, the dance of the wind.
But in this glorious scene...
Could it be?
A gentle hoot?
An owl, old as time, whispering my name in the wind.

Stage one is just “hello.”


A relationship has many steps;
Like the staircase to hell, those steps are complicated.
Hello introduces the the idea of fear, love, hate, laughs.
Greetings are the sticks and paper to a crackling bonfire.
No going back on crackle snap pop rocks sending love to intermediate joker cards.
Boy am I a wild card, I’ll play you like a game of cards.
But only at stage 3.
Stage one is just hello.

Step 2 is the Talk Stage.
Speaking is hard sometimes.
Talking can be a metaphor, like roses blooming in moonlight...
Or rain water sinking into the soil.
Step 2 is better described, though, as
setting tones of color into your outline.
Learning to play but there's no instructions,
Mapping our minds and beliefs.

Stage 3 is when I burn us alive,
Bonfire friendship roasting our skin, crackly giggles and pinky-red smirks.
But we’re only at stage one, baby.
No screaming, shouting, reaching for our hearts...

Stage one is just hello.

I am saccharine kisses before lullaby led naps.
I wonder if you know your name yet.
I hear you giggling and cooing from your crib.
I see you've grown quite a bit.
I want you to stay small forever, my dear, I want you to stay small.
I am swifty cheek kisses before waving goodbye.
I pretend to want you gone from my nest
I feel like I've bitten a lemon.
I touch your shoulder before tucking you in
I worry Until she's gone, a shadow remains.
I cry over a loss soon to come...
I am apathetic side hugs before taking my leave.
I understand you're growing old and you're ready to flee.
I say I miss when you giggled and cooed,
I dream of your small little toes, 1 2 3.
I try to be happy that you're growing old like me.
I hope you know what I mean.
I am saccharine kisses before lullaby led naps,
But my kisses are frail and you’ll remember it as my last.

It's in a color
A shade
A sight.
Impulse control is brought to the light.
Creature creation;
Imagine a nation
Where attention isn't amazing.
Wow, the egg yolks are bright
On your false fur skin.

I'm signing up for a poetry contest.
Can you guys and gals tell me which one of my poems is worthy?
Much love!
-Smothered Divine

Lucious, low effort, smooth rolling ink;
Black like bottled midnight drying on my powder white pages.