Alexis Cook

Alexis Cook Jul 2014

There are too many souls
that have gone and drilled holes
through the floors upon which I walk.

Now, when I look down
I more often notice the ground
so very far from the soles of my feet.

Like the same sensation
you get from walking on a catwalk...
high above a theater's stage.

My heart drops all the way to my feet
becoming the only thing between
me and the space below.

Alexis Cook Mar 2014

Title (optional)

I'm begging for intimacy.
I'm pining for attraction.
I long for affection.
And around every corner,
I find myself yearning.

I yearn for anything
to replicate the very same feeling I get
when I feel the summer sun on my face,
the warm breeze brushing my hair off my neck,
the soft wetness of a particularly lush patch of grass beneath my toes.

The feeling I get
the one that bubbles up
and spreads warmth
throughout my core...
the one that draws the corners of my lips
involuntarily upward.
The kind of smile that's like daisies popping up on formerly
barren ground
in defiance of the harsh winter they've endured.

I'm chasing the refreshing parts of reality.
Searching for things most genuine...
the real diamonds that lie in plain sight.
A warm embrace of a soul that truly connects with yours.
The little victories that pass unnoticed by the turn of the earth...
the ones that I manage to catch just out the corner of my eye.
The freshness of something borne of the sole miracle of nature.

Things that I can only witness.
Things beyond my power to create.

Organic
Uncontrollable
Serendipitous
Simple

Alexis Cook Mar 2014

the opposite of fraud

I spend most of my time wondering when I'm gonna get the guts to actually be the person that I pretend to be.
How can I forget the past six years?
The past 6 months?
How can I let the examples of my failures sit entombed in my impeccable photographic memory?

How can I let myself be my own biggest critic?

But the real question is... When will they all realize that I'm a fraud?

I've always known that I'm not brave enough to truly stand up to myself.
But how can I convince myself that maybe I can turn myself into a fraud of a fraud?
Maybe I can denigrate my own negations...
I'm going to turn the tables on my own demons.
I will triumph over their triumph.
I am a fraud of my own fraud.

Alexis Cook Jan 2014

You infuriate me.

You infuriate me.
There. I said it.
I want you to disappear.
But you won't.
And somehow I just can't seem to make you.
You're in my photos.
You're still trampling uninvited through my thoughts.
There are still traces of you in my bed.
And sometimes if I fall too far into my memories I can still feel your body pressed against mine.
These are the parts of you that linger.
They are the parts that have stuck to me.
They have worked themselves into my puzzle.
But to my dismay, those are not all of the pieces to your puzzle.
There are gaping holes and backwards parts.
There are those shadows that you so carefully hid... the ones that I so carelessly fell into.
They are the ones that take me down and thrash me about.
And somehow I still find myself trying to fit us together.
But some parts of that puzzle would never fit.
Leaving our faults all too glaringly lit.
And when this all comes to it's inevitable end, I'll welcome the horribly empty feeling of being right.

Alexis Cook Nov 2013

You called me here.

The November sun shone a bit brighter,
the rays on my face just a little bit warmer
and
I just couldn't help but ponder...

Did you call me here?
Tell me, did you put this bug in my ear?
Cause I haven't been here in so long
Almost like my memory held a fog.
But now somehow it's clear
You must have called me here.

A smile and a laugh.
The crunch of leaves over green grass.
Too much time has come to pass.
I left a flower on your grave,
and there I stood and prayed.

I'm glad you called me here.

Alexis Cook Nov 2013

The Resignation Letter

This is my resignation letter.
I have given up on any chance of you.
I forfeit my desire, my longing...
my wish to love you in the way that I do.
I now know that we are those two lonely ships
passing in the harbor at nightfall.
I am leaving...
heading out to open water,
the lonely, dark and deep sea.
And you...
you are heading into port
towards the strangers that hold
the same interest revelry that you do.
This is who we are.
These are our lots in life.
I can't make you come with me and
you can't make me stay.
I've come to realize that port will
freeze over before I am ready to return.
Making you a distant island
to which I have been
But cannot gain access to until the big thaw
many months from now.
My acceptance of this has made me
flexible, pliable and willing.
Willing to go discover new and far shores.
I will moor in a new harbor
and cast my anchor into the shallows of a new coast line.
I seek a new lighthouse seated on another point.
I seek a new dock and a new someone to help me tie down my lines
I was never meant to stay.

Alexis Cook Oct 2013

Time takes away more than it gives

As I glance up
I catch the clock ticking by...
another second gone.
And all at once the gravity of it all hits me.
The loss of one of many seconds in my life...
that one meant something.
It was something that belonged to me...
And I just threw it away.
I did nothing to grasp onto it,
nothing to do it any justice.
I just sat here and watched it tick past
and on to the next.
It wasn't special.
It was passive

meaningless

It is gone.
Forever lost to the passing of time.
And I begin to think...
Time takes away more than it gives.