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Sleeping in a hotel,
Away from home
The mattress seems cold and hard,
Like a prison floor
The body next to mine is warm,
Raising so slightly with her
Shallow morning breaths
How we got here,
I don’t remember
But the emptied bottle of
Grey Goose by the bed
Seems to be a clue
It even explains the aching,
A dull pain behind my eye
I roll closer to the stranger
Next to me, draping an arm
Over her soft skin
As if hoping to absorb,
The name of this beauty
Her hair, like straw,
A golden brown, the faint
Scent of smoke
From the night before
Soft lips press to mine
“Good morning”, she says,
Her voice seeming angelic
“Hey”, I reply,
And we share a smile,
After we rise
“Last night”, the words
Fumbling from my mouth
Before I could even finish,
“Don’t worry about it”,
The door shutting behind her,
She left me with nothing,
But I, was in love
 Mar 2012 Audrey Howitt
v V v
I saw a woman ****** today
for an uncommitted crime,
I loved another faithfully
but didn't earn a dime,
and both are liars, he and I,
for love's no guarantee,
the price today for happiness
- - a matter of degrees.
 Mar 2012 Audrey Howitt
v V v
Beware the frigid woman
who can lean upon the stars
but never gather light
or comprehend heat.

She hides what to reveal
would turn her lover’s eyes away,
the scars her daddy left,
the guilt thrown at the pews,
the touch of too many,
the touch of too few.

For strangers she
will fly the moon, for you
she comes home tired
to sleep on nails.

A master of conditional love
she heaps her baggage on the ones
who love her most,
entitlement
the only truth she breathes.

She never goes to where
you'd  take her

she only commits to
deception

and stacks of Bibles do nothing
to bring forth truth

I tell you this much

the light across the dawn is more
than just the sun
and everything you give her
will rust.
Previously published at ****** and Novocaine, December 2012
 Mar 2012 Audrey Howitt
Perig3e
There is
  an interlude
      within silence,

a white on white chimera,

that anoints the thee and thou

in transubstantiation

  that wafers us.
Your car
is my own personal
spaceship, hurtling
through galaxies --
billboard planets
and streetlight stars

The city
doesn't sleep
so much as it snores
this early in the morning,
piles of buildings
stacked together carelessly
across the skyline

My legs
curled beneath me,
an insect shriveling
back into her cocoon,
we don't speak
only discontinuing silence

You retreat
into your shell
before I can speak
a word of the truth
that is congealed
in my chest, a
cancerous mass
that is sure
to stop my breath

This night,
it hasn't broken me
so much as it has
brought me back to life,
soon I'll remember how
warm a person's eyes get
after they've been so cold
for such a long time

We whisper
under our breaths,
fumbling to connect
with sentences strung out
across a wire between
our ears, cans pressed tight

And now,
my house looming
before me, a
swirling black hole
that swallows me whole,
your headlights barely
a spark in the distance

I wish
more than anything
that I could follow you
back home, curl with you
until this ache has left
from my bones

But if I did,
I know it would be
different than we thought
Your quiet mouth would
change beneath mine
and I know, you would never
stop until you understood why

this blooming pressure
tears at my lungs
until I can breathe again
Sweetheart,
there is a star
cut out from my heart

I would give it
to you, hold it
outstretched
and let it fall
into your hands,
a warm and glowing
reminder of something
I told you, years ago

I would hold
galaxies, swirling,
up to your face where
you could watch them
turning  --

I'd leap over train tracks
and lay my hand close
to the flame at your core
just so I could
brush this white-hot
pain away from your chest,

I'm watching it
blistering there, and
the flames are licking
at the piece of me that has
always been connected
between us, veins weaving
together in tangled knots, I'm stuck
so close to you it hurts

And tonight, this holy
darkness closing over
your head, I hope
you can think of this,
and touch your hand to
your heart --

I hope you can smile
thinking of the ties
that bring me sailing
back to you.
For my best friend, who needed a poem of his own.
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