Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
allison Aug 2015
I have spent far too long scavenging for the little quirks of myself that he could learn to love
Suddenly, I'm 19, begging my mother to tell me how special I am
I beg her to tell me I'm beautiful, but hearing her say it reminds me of him, before he left
I pleaded her to get him to come back, to come home
After all, parents can do anything, right?
But she didn't get him to come back, she didn't even try
She assured me he was undeserving of my heart,
but that went in one ear and out the other
I remember collapsing to the ground
and banging my fists upon the floor
All while screaming out, hating the universe for allowing our souls to depart ways
Then, I buried all the love in me
I pronounced it dead, lifeless, gone
I put my love on a shelf
  May 2015 allison
berry
this is a poem about how you sleep,
how your body grew cold like a corpse in a mortuary.
how it felt wrong to reach out and touch you.
did you know that you turned away from me
every time i tried to face you?
did you do it on purpose?
maybe you were afraid i would be able to see
you were dreaming of her,
that i would read it on your face.
lines by your mouth like obituary,
like roadmap, her bedroom,
the destination, mine, a pitstop.
loving you was like attending a funeral service for myself
and sitting in the front row. no.
loving you was like watching you pick out a casket
and call it practice. ****.
i know how sensitive you are about death.
i know it still hurts.
i know how everything hurts.
i am sorry for just being another thing that hurts.
i think i'm afraid to let you forget that you used to want me.
like if i can somehow dig deep enough,
wound you into remembering me.
i keep weapons-grade nostalgia in my back pocket
for the days i can feel myself slipping from your consciousness.  
i was born with scar tissue where skin should've been.
but this isn't about me.
this is about the way you sleep
like you're waiting for someone to close the lid,
cover you in dirt, and read a psalm.
this is about the way i tried to sing your pieces back together,
and the way my voice gives out
when i read the things you write for anyone other than me.
lover, friend, stranger,
i just wanted to show you how to love your darker parts.
i never meant to become one.
i am so ******* selfish.
but i swear i am trying to unlearn the steps.
and you used to think my two left feet were charming.
i am out of time in more ways than one.
i keep stepping on your toes.
i can't seem to stop tripping you up,
hoping that you'll fall back into whatever this was.

- m.f.
"i am always dying in places where you fell asleep." - K.L.
  May 2015 allison
Tom Leveille
whenever i hear a wind chime i think of your voice. i wonder what it's like to be your bedsheets. what it would really be like to understand the jargon in your head. i ******* want to kiss you sometimes and then others i really do want concrete between your hands & my skin. i can't think straight all the time so i wonder if it benefits me at all to explain what it means that i don't want or expect anything from you but if we accidentally liked eachother in that middle school "sort of way" then i wouldn't say no. i want to really understand what you mean when you say "stay" to me in our texts. i wonder if your sleeping pills do to you what they do to me. i'm thinking again about "stay" and maybe i'm choked up on you leaving for school up north but i'll never tell you because get the **** out of here and don't look back especially not for me. stay. your smile, genuine or not tears me in two. i wish every face on the planet had your smile and i am ******* afraid of you wearing lipstick. i'm terrified of your bare skin and goodbyes. i hate farewells and see you laters. i knew the first time i saw you interact on your phone while drinking coffee the way you text people and how i now do the same thing. i get around read receipts. i sometimes want to hear you say you want.. not so much me, maybe me, but my company. theres a park near my house where i've imagined us paddle boating. i got written up at work once for daydreaming about it. what the **** is in a friendship anyway, decency in a human isn't biological. i get hung up on knee jerks and gut reactions. i want to know what the ******* are thinking about when i look up and you are looking right at me. but then again, i don't. as long as i'm wondering. as long as the door might swing open or closed. stay. go. run. **** your collarbones. **** your chest and skin and lips and everything i hate but crave and might like about you without say so. stay. sit down and explain to me why it is that i care anyway. i am afraid that if i say i want to *******, you'll think i mean *******, and not "*******". i wanna know if any of this sounds familiar and i here i am back to wondering what the **** is going on and why you're looking at me. the hair on my neck stands on end when you do and another thing... **** poetry. i cloud my feelings for you & anything else with the abstract so you'll never really know if i ******* hit rock bottom or not over the fact that i know we will never kiss. somebody just said "**** buddy" on tv and i think sometimes symmetry between irony & circumstance. i have harbored some of these thoughts since the night you said hello to me. i'm sorry i had to get over the fact that once upon a time i wanted to save somebody, and you weren't going to let it be you. i do sometimes think my hands might break you, that you spend your day painting a picket fence in your head that you can't get on one side or the other on. i felt like you didn't want to get up from dinner and i rushed it out the door because i am afraid to start a sentence with so. so stay. i am sorry my words often wear brass knuckles. your smile shoots to **** and if i ever die while you still remember my name i want you to read this or read something at my funeral. i don't know if these butterflies are waiting for me to jump or sit down but they speak up when my phone lights up & it's you.
  May 2015 allison
Tom Leveille
i always thought
you were thru traffic
that you were just jet lag
background noise
the kiss in the rain
i've never had
but what if you aren't?
what if this
was the thousandth time
i have loved you?
what if this is just a fresh coat of paint?
what if god
keeps a handkerchief
soaked in the day we met
next to his bed?
maybe theres a reason
i reach for no one in bed
the way i would
if someone used to be there
you know, they say
the road behind us
is littered with things
we couldn't hold onto
i wonder how many times
you've slipped through my hands
like hour glass sand
do you know
how much erosion you've caused?
i heard cupid
stopped keeping count
of how many times
we came together
just to come apart again
maybe it was just a rumor
it makes me think
about how many times
i've almost had you
like if all this talk
about history repeating itself
endlessly replaying is true
i wonder how many times
things have happened already
like the time
i tried talking you
into loving me back
back fired
or the time i could have sworn
jesus & lazarus were playing chess
with my heartbeat
but it was only you smiling
how many times
have i tried to tell you
how many times
have you read this poem
how many times
have i tried not to meet you
in my dreams anymore
it's like sleep tries to warn
me of what's happening
before it does but
i keep having this dream
where i tell you bedtime stories
and each one
is a different way you die
and in every one
i can never save you
it's like you're this song
i have on repeat
and every time it starts over
i forget the words
it's like you picked up the book entitled "us"
and the back cover
said you'd leave
so you never bothered reading it
tell me you aren't
going back in that bookstore
just to do it again
or will you tell me tomorrow?
or is this the time
you don't say anything at all?
if this has all happened before
if we call it quits
before we begin
again
from the beginning
i just want to ask you
to be my fire
because i am tired
of these old lives
and i'd like to see them
burn
  May 2015 allison
Tom Leveille
i love you this morning
it's a come home safe morning
fog on the road
& no seatbelt kind of morning
the sun is over easy
& nothing's on fire
there's punctuation
where i don't want it
and extra love
in the glovebox of my car
been thinking about being honest
how these poems are all me
but they tell the story
how someone else
might believe it happened
within reasonable doubt
no copy & pasted love letters
no 'who ever says hello first gets my attention for the day'
try a little tenderness
in my ears and today
there are instruments
in the back of my head
i think you love me
because i'm sunburned
felt it in a 'come hell or high water' kinda way, that 'touched from far away' kinda way that 'if i touch this piano one more time one of us is going to break' kinda way
and i drove over 17 bridges yesterday and today i'll do it again
and i think nobody gets
what that means except maybe you
i just tell them i love the scenery
that somebody must've made
these trees blush just for me
you know how i love
to change the subject
i bet they'd love the view
i bet you would too
and all these metaphors
for other things are beside the point
this is a metaphor
for why i don't wear my seatbelt
a metaphor for why whiskey
knows me better than you
could ever try to
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars
are doing that cliche thing
where they talk
quiet jet noise
& some lumbering giant
made everything shake
not those hand metaphors
not another one of those
& keep the sea to yourself
i think it was a train
it's sound hugged the embankment
for a moment
and then trailed off into nowhere
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue'
close to my home &
it's no coincidence
that i've never been there
Next page