Abbigail

Abbigail Sep 2014

Invite me into the pages of your insecurities
and all you find is wrong with you.

Dig the deepest of tunnels
and bury me there in the corner of your brain,
but the part that holds all your obsessions,
of collarbones,
romantic comedies,
of expensive whiskey,
of me.

Tangle me up in your bed sheets,
make it feel like more than infatuation.
Throw me into the cell where you've locked away your worst self;
show me the bad with all of your good.

Dance me across the floor where you lay your heart out.
Guide me around every fragile part
and trust that they won't be shattered under my feet.

Write me the words of your universe
and show me the flight of your hands
upon my face,
down my spine,
around my legs.
Make me believe I'm the first one
to ever make your wrists shake
and your mouth uncertain.

Draw my name on your forearm,
under your sleeve.
Hide it from your mother and know that as long as it's there,
I exist.

Carve me into the headboard of the bed you plan to take with you
the next place you go.
Remember me there every time you move your pillow
away from its place against the wooden frame.

Drink me in as you drink in your coffee
from across the table.
Pass me the syrup and your grinning lips.

Study my movements
as you pretend to study your crossword,
and I'll study your reflection on my spoon
as I pretend not to notice.

#love #trust #heart #dance #unknown #infatuation #insecurities #secrets #familiar #fragile

Abbigail Aug 2014

There Will Be A Day

I'd always doubted that there would ever be a day when my heart didn't ache for you.
How could twenty four hours pass by without a single thought of what once held enough power to make us change everything we believe in?

I feared I'd never stop waiting for you on a burning ledge, dipping my toes in the lava that we had always begged to be sand,
just to watch you turn back around before you could even feel the steam
or the sweat beading down your forehead.

Life keeps a tally chart for each time my mother is right.
She was right about the love and the hurt that lingers on and she was right about the noises in your ears, years later, that sound an awful lot like their voice right beside you.
Now, add another tally for "moving on", because that ringing doesn't happen so often these days
and your voice doesn't cast that spell on me anymore,
the one that levitates my body across the distance between us
until I'm near enough to remember why I loved you;
I don't care to know anymore.

Could it be that now, finally, you can appear without destroying everything in your path?
Could it be that now I am still standing when a thought of you forces its way back to me;
that my chest feels no more than a quicker step and with one deep breath, I am honestly and truly okay?

. . .

Abbigail Aug 2014

Exposition

The space between our awkward bones
is like the water you let in when it rains;
it's not a lot
but it's always too much.

Sometimes there are letters between your lips
that try to spell out words you've never said out loud.
Something about secrets make us feel a little closer.
I'm always sure to keep my lips closed
when tucked away words try to escape off my tongue;
I swallow them instead.
Because secrets also scare us away.

The air is different when you're in the room.
It's not any warmer or cooler,
not really dryer or thicker;
just easier to breathe.

Sometimes a song makes me think of you.
But then again, most things do
and maybe nothing about it has to do with you;
it’s merely a justification for the creases of my mind
being stuffed with my crumpled up curiosities
and lined up polaroids of all of your expressions.

I’ve imagined us old,
sitting on a porch together facing an open lake
with our favorite authors in hand.
Every couple of pages one of us is caught
with our gaze on the other,
and as soon as we lock eyes
we'll blush and grin and look back to the places we left off.

I've imagined it once or twice.
Maybe three times.
I'd never tell you that.

There's one continent on Earth for each story that you tell,
but I swear,
I'd go in endless circles around the world
just to hear you laugh at each one every time.
And I'd smile as if I'd never been there before,
betting on the chance that your smile might overstay its welcome.

The way you love is like a book I haven't read yet.
There are words written in permanent marker on all the places of me
that only you can have;
and every word you choose to write is one I've never heard before
but now that I know it, no other word could be right.

Sometimes I hold my own hand,
Rest my own head on my shoulder,
Run my own fingers through my hair,
just to imagine what it is you like about them.
I'm not yet sure,
but I beg them every day
not to let you stop.

I don't believe in soulmates and you don't believe in souls.
We can love anyone we want to,
but if your soul had a color,
I think it'd be the color I dream in.

#love #confessions #happy #you #souls #secrets

Abbigail May 2014

Sobering Up

I knew that only telling myself you never existed
would be as difficult as telling a drunk that he'd never tasted alcohol.
But you, my poisonous drug,
I've been sober of you for 388 days now
and if I let myself slip up,
if your name rolls off a tongue near by and I allow myself to react,
to absorb that name,
to taste that name,
to feel, to hold, to know that name,
I start counting my days all over again.

So now I'm just 1 day sober...
and I don't know anybody by that name.

#heart #sober #poison #you #addicted #heal

Abbigail May 2014

Foreign Atmospheres Call for Fearful Little Girls

I’ve never learned the way to be content
with scummy hard wood floors in studio apartments
and falling asleep to police sirens and the rush of cars over city bridges
and drug dealers outside my window whose business is only recognizable by night.

Boxes stay kept in the closet where I can’t be bothered by their stares
that beg me to loosen the layers of packing tape wrapped in every direction;
I can’t remember if I’m going to like what’s inside of them and I really,
really don’t want to not like it.

What makes a hundred stranger’s old homes become a home of yours?
Imagination is turning white walls that hold thousands of secrets
between each new layer of paint
into something that whispers familiar things to you before the lights go out.

There’s not enough bleach underneath the sink to wash away the stains of everyone who’s been here first,
no matter how much I scrub,
no matter how many bruises I’ll be willing to find on my knees tomorrow.
Ledges gathered dust of skin particles I hadn't been here to shed
And the bathtub is left with soap remnants rinsed from someone else's body.

My bed fits perfectly over the faded circle of wood in the corner,
and I’m sure theirs did too.
Tonight I’ll sleep to all things made here
and all things lost.

I’ll set my life up on the floor beneath two more
I'll memorize the routine of footstep patterns above me.

I never expected that a fresh start would feel so much more
like a lot of tangled endings.

#home #nervous #scared #ghost #strange #new #***** #old #beginnings #history

Abbigail May 2014

Love and Depression

"I don't deserve you,"* you say to me
Just as you'd said a million times before.
You're the best person I've ever met,
I know because of the feeling in my chest
When your words become too serious,
And you want your hurt to end so badly
That you're willing to go away with it.

Your phone is just a dead end
But I'll keep trying until I can't,
Which shouldn't be long now because
My head has never pounded so loudly
And neither has my heart,
And I can't see the numbers I'm dialing
Through the heavy pools between my eyelids.

I've never been so afraid of anything
In my life.
I'm in just a small room of all the world,
And yet most of it is only filled with you.
And I'm crying in my room and
I didn't think I'd ever be afraid to think that
You might be done crying in yours.

Each bare-footed step in the grass
Feels the dew that garnered while your eyes were closed,
And each night I count the stars that died
Only to shine through your window and give you something beautiful
to look at.
The tree in my front yard grows for you
And the initials we carved into its bark refuse to heal.
The sigh as I fall asleep and the dress that hangs upon my shoulders and wraps around my waist does so for you and only you.

Everything I want is you
And everything you are, you hate.
And I want to convince you to love you,
Even more than I want to convince you to love me.

Can't you see that the sun only rises to see your face?
Don't you know that the crickets only chirp when they know that you're listening?
And how is it that you aren’t blinded by the reflection of your light in every room that you illuminate?

I didn't want to make you feel bad 
when I told you that the scariest moment  of my life
was in those long hours of  not knowing
whether or not the best part  of my world was still a part of the world.
I just wanted you to realize how bad  it would be if you weren’t.

You're sure that as hard as you look,
you can't see anything in you that's worth loving.
Please don't give up.
Because any direction I glance,
the something worth loving in you is my only view.

Loving somebody doesn't work if they don't love themselves. But there will always be those of us who love too hard to really mind that.

#love #fear #depression #heart #pain #hurt #stay #you #sorry #save

Abbigail Apr 2014

homesickness

The next time you go home,
don't let your palm linger on the doorknob on your way out.
Just throw out the old toothbrush she hasn't come to use in months
and take down the painting above your bed
coated in colors that reminded her of *****, grass-stained knees and dandelion bracelets;
and don't pretend that homesick
is something you could ever feel without her shoes at the door.

#love #home #sadness #lost #left #gone #memory #missing #leaving #homesick #lingering