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 Jul 2016 Alleigh Peterson
Corvus
Spending a month in a hospital teaches you a lot about people.
The doctor that told me to shave my head or she wouldn't treat me,
The nurses that spent forever chatting to me
And giving me supportive advice about how my illness doesn't define me.
The woman who was given a terminal cancer sentence
And chose not to pay attention to it and defied it anyway.
How she sat next to me on my bed,
Told me that all suffering is valid,
And just because I'm not dying, doesn't mean I don't get to complain.
How she complains more about her skin problems
Than she ever complained about her cancer,
And that's OK, because pain rarely follows rules.
I never even learned her name,
But she gave me the words I hold most closely to me
On those days when I want to fall asleep and never wake up.
I'm allowed to scream and shout and rage against the pain
And the unfairness of it happening to me.
I just have to make sure I know where the line is
Between giving my darkness a voice and pitying myself.
She was the one pool
where I would happily drown,

you're perfect,
don't change a thing,

but two
simple sentences
resonate within me

"Are you satisfied?"

"No, you haven't kissed me."
old
 Jun 2016 Alleigh Peterson
-
Hello, I'm

Very pleased to meet you, it's just
you can't see it underneath my chronic "resting ***** face."

I've actually been told that it's more of a chronic "sad and brooding" face, but, I'll take what I can get.

Some things you need to know before dating me are

I do like long walks to the bottom of the ocean,
and I spent most of my childhood under bridges. I know what it's like to walk with two left feet - or no feet at all, so to speak.

I smoke cigarettes when I'm sad because I like the feel and when I was a teenager, I wanted nothing more than to be Morrissey when I grew up.

Plot twist:
I grew up, and I'm still not Morrissey.


But I can write you a mean love poem, and I'll do it on many occasions, even if I'm just meeting you. There won't be a second when I'm not falling in love with something, and, to be honest, I don't know how to live with (or without) that feeling.

I guess I'll just fall in love with trees, then
or something inanimate
to break my fall.

But in the meantime, some things you need to know before dating me are

That there are often days where I can't even stand to face the wind that greets me
and I flinch at every turn when I hear noise.
I'm more timid than I look and yet
I find comfort
in dark things, a fake sense of the macabre
and a firm grasp of words, see

I could make anyone want to want me
I just don't care to
because people are ******* terrifying.

And, in the end
when my star burns out,
all that is left in the center
will be old words
and photographs.
Number 5 - a spoken word piece. Inspired by Jamie Mortara's piece by the same name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BaO3iU2ICA
red
today my gums bled when i brushed my teeth,
and i thought of making some metaphor
about how efforts to attain purity
only result in more stains,
but no.
it was just blood.

to call a rose — or torn gums — by any other name
is to silence the initial sting,
but it still ends up hurting more in the end.
it always does.
lying always does.

and if all i have are my words,
what am i if my words are lies?

what am i if i cannot be honest?

a bad writer, perhaps.
but trying.
i am also trying.

there are some days when the blood looks
a little less like words on a page,
and simply a little more like red,
and i am hopeful.

yet still i know
that efforts to attain purity
only result in more stains,
and red is a ***** to clean out.

(a.m.)
written june 28, 2016. inspired by bleeding gums. hope you enjoy. xo
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