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  Dec 2017 Erin
Sam
You built a house out of dominoes and Jenga blocks, and it still took you by surprise when it all came shattering down around you.

In all fairness, it’s been a long time coming.

In all fairness, you caught pieces, from time to time.

But you wanted to hold onto something, because everything you ever knew only told you that the only way to make a good thing was to burn the bad thing down, rebuild it from the ground up. And you just wanted to be able to be fixed.

People are not houses. They do not survive the fire or the burn or the smell of acrid smoke. They can not be reborn like phoenixes from the ashes.

You flirted with denial longer than you should have. You let the streams of I’m fine It’s okay That’s great Everything’s good. I’m okay. I’m fine. I’m alright. I’m fine, really. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. bleed into and over each other until your lies clashed a little too close, and people started to peer in with suspicion.

Rule 1 of denial: deny.
Rule 2: lie until you believe it.
Rule 3: don’t let anyone suspect.
Rule 4: minimize the damage.

Your house fell into rubble with a phone call at the end of a good day.

Because it wasn’t really a good day, just a good enough day, because you ate lunch and dinner, because your hands shook a little bit, because you had only a small headache. Because things weren’t worse, and they could have been.

You aren’t fine.

You’re breathing, and you’re going through the motions. And you don’t intend to die any time soon.

You’re existing, but you aren’t fine.

A stack of dominoes, and a pile of haphazardly stacked Jenga blocks. So build back a complete house, without the collapse. Add in glue, or safety pins, rope. Take a step back, sometimes, observe. When you see a fissure, hold steady and fix the crack. Do not avert your eyes.

You are not fine.
  Dec 2017 Erin
galaxy of myths
I'm looking at everything and at everyone
but not at anything or anyone
in particular.
My eyes fleet over the distance
but not drinking in any detail.
I'm in a daze;
Hunched over in my oversized jacket,
hands hidden in pockets.
Sad sad.
This place is too noisy;
I'm getting warm with agitation.
My eyesight is blurry.
I just want this to stop.
But it goes on and on.
They're looking at me oddly.
Shrugging at each other
when I don't respond.
I tried to smile but fail.
Came out as a grimace again.
I did it again.
Always the odd one out.
"She's in that mood again"
I don't know. I don't know.
b r e a t h e
You'll get back on track again.
Hopefully. Eventually.

-m.b
  Dec 2017 Erin
NRIKO
I.
My pillow smells like another deity.

In the morning, I breathe out
from only one form,
daylight to dictate who is allowed to wake,
from within me.

And during that time,
I am one deity;
I am one deity;
I am one deity.

But when night falls
and lullabies are accepted into a place
with four walls and barely a door,
I am seeded into a different
plane of reality.

Hitting my pillow,
falling into its soft embrace,
its plastic scent is dizzying-
because it is not mine.

This way,
vertigo can easily write itself over
my heightened senses.

II.
In this realm,
I exist not as myself,
or just one deity that
wishes to be
skinny-dipping into daylight
without anxiety.

Instead,
I am everything I ever wanted to be-
either something that is
close to this "true persona" i speak of
or something of a far away fantasy.

In this realm,
this void that is a blockage
from a world of judgemental skin,
I have one hand-
the key to the judgements
of the ministrations of the night.

III.
You see,
in this realm,
there are two things your hands can do
in a rather lengthy moment of warm privacy.

You can either use both yellow hands
(frigid, lacking of blood circulation),
to embrace
(without loving, without care)
to snake around your neck or
you can snake one hand
between two pillars that,
in daylight,
bring them from one place
to another.

IV.
While,
far far away,
in a wonderland,
you (or perhaps me?) wish
to be a part of one day-

a boy you've seen in short,
sizzling hallways to arousal
and moments of desire
ー He sings.

V.
He sings for you in unknown pity,
in the fact that he barely knows you,
in the fact that you,
despite never being able to touch
such majestic and soft paleness
of another-

to touch what can be touched,
yet you yourself cannot-

He sings for you until your fingers move slowly
far, far away from hell
yet closer and closer to a little
bit of death.

That is how it is;
your pillow that smells of another deity
that isn't in accordance to the "you"
painted by social sunlight-

That is how it is;
a duplication of you that is somewhat you
and the small waist you felt
your fingers touch-

afraid you'd break their
small innocent body
is gone.

It's morning now,
and fantasies are better
when kissed by blankets
and shown with purple skin
and a clock
that depicts midnight.

VI.
Before you do,
morning comes first
and it is time-

to burn yet another
undecipherable duplication
of yourself-

or whatever left of who you
used to be.

- eozyoh. 14.12.2017. 16:37.
Erin Nov 2017
Ill rumors slid down my throat, gelatinous and coated in bitter mucus - reminiscent of when I was five years old, just dared to kiss a slug found in the school's daffodils. They burned my esophagus, leaving me without taste for days. They left me stumbling over too big, too-there feet to the nurse's office in search of Dramamine.
A quick rambling I came across in the margins of one of my school notebooks.
Erin Nov 2017
Miss, Atomic Bomb,
how are you today?

Do you feel a jittering in your veins,
hear a chattering of ivory teeth
in your sugar skull
candied by your wish to always be oh-so-sweeter?

When you fell to the ground under his hands,
rough with militant knuckles
tattooed in unlined blues and purples
transforming into nausea-inducing camouflage hues,
and your new, Target brand, $2.99 black tights
ripped viciously at the knees,
did you feel an explosion in your chest?

Did you feel angry,
willing to lash out with toxic words
that your floodgates had always tried to hold back,
the dams now creaking and groaning in beautiful sighs?

Did you,
when it hurt,
fight against that war hero who had held you close
during a time you could barely remember,
blurred crimsons shading the edges of every smiling photograph?

Or did you fold him into your campfire-scented embrace
and apologize profusely
for being so naturally destructive?
I bet you open your lips-
swollen and bleeding through cracks
that could define
‘damaged’
in the dictionary you flip through
when everything is numb,
and only battle wounds of paper cuts will suffice-
just to speak those awful words.

I bet
you allowed him to tell you
that you were a weapon-
self-triggering,
horrific,
prepared to injure
those
innocent,
pink-lipped,
blue-eyed girls he stared at on the street
just to keep what you had.

But,
Miss Atomic Bomb,
someone had to have dropped you.
someone had to have thrown you
from your security,
and I bet against life itself
that the guilt lies in those calloused palms.

I bet you never noticed
the rope tied around your ankle,
expertly knotted so that he could just keep
reeling you back up into his arms.

He liked you on that verge of manic destruction,
eyes wide,
holding onto oceans threatening to flood that little studio apartment of yours
in New York City.

He wasn’t ready to let you truly fall.
He still isn’t.

So,
Dear Atomic Bomb,
know that that
run in your tights is only the beginning of the end.
The scraped flesh on your knees
is only the beginning of
the carnage that could be wrought.

And none of it will be your fault,
your *******, crumbling-at-the-seams fault.

You won’t cause the war,
and you can still crawl out on
shrapnel-coated limbs.

Take my heed,
little girl –
desert.
This is not about me, but hopefully it may be able to help someone else going through this sort of domestic situation.
  Oct 2017 Erin
Third Eye Candy
it was the moon that fell through. a lump of gray astronaut
pale acne-blasted, an orphan of the dome, floating in a pond
face down; gasping... green brass minnows surge through diatoms
that have no word for moon; a legion of blind unicorn gall stones -
invisible to naked eyes; uncountable geometries horde the dark waters
they cannot disprove or disobey. large mouth bass inhale calcium polygons
they have never met; that have no word for large mouth bass -
that hasn't always been unknown as september is meaningless
now, even more so, the meaning is less,
without the moon... so
the last tide is false. a satellite has lost it's grip and displaced a placid
jewel of ice cold pause. in the backwoods of these. words. a. moon.
is. breathing. in. a. void. teeming. with. ancient. life.
it is a void, unfamiliar to a native of heaven. this void used to rise and fall
in obedience to the wax and wane. in accord with her orbit.
but now it burns the ocean of serenity with irony's forge.
pounding the stainless steel of unfathomable loss;
even the dross sustains a shape of things to come undone -
when the hammer falls and the blacksmith is a poet
born to ****** fables from mayflies. a natural.
the hammer was in the hand before the moon gained
a face or an ocean to adore it. it was there,
ticking like a season, burgeoning with locusts -
holding off the mob; the moon was long ago, slipping off the roof -
long before firemen met lightning.
the tide was a pious fool.
the measure was not the span of the impending verse, but the hour of it's
callous beauty, assembled. a lunacy, stripped of all moons.
and only the sun remaining -
to behold the uncanny descent of a faithful, vestigial goddess.
a yellow throne. a yellow eye. and the sun's first chill...
as wave after wave of syllables sum succulent sorrows -
savoring sacred symmetries, asymmetrically... summoning -
super luminary strawberry switchblades,
saving sanity for questions with question marks.

this poem fell through. a lung collapsed or not.

and the moon is at the bottom of my heart.
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