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Brooke Nov 2018
Let me tell you, I thought I knew love before you came around.

I mean, I’ve written a million love poems.

But the subjects, they’re more or less the same, black ink, red ink, graphite.

And the graphite smudges, and so the picture is never perfect.

I try to re-write it all without mistakes, but I don't have an eraser.

Which is to say that I have commitment issues, but no issue committing, I just commit all the time, to everything.

I've canoodled with paper, but there's never enough space on the page for all the love I have.

Sometimes, I’ll meet a crayon that brings some colour to my life, but they’re just too waxy and impressionable. Too immature, too naive.

Naive.

I’ve never actually been in love.

But you, you are so much different and way hotter.

You bring a spark into my life that I’ve never known.

Baby, you set my world on fire.

I tell myself, blue pen, don’t let this go up in smoke.

Let me tell you. I would do anything to know love.

You see, there isn’t much to me, but I’ve got this way with words and I’ll write you into every poem that’s ever birthed hope in the eyes of star-crossed lovers.

I’ll draw you a map of my heart so when you feel lonely after you’ve been put aside and forgotten in the back of a cupboard, I’ll be there.

I want you.

I want the good things and your sweet embrace of smoke smells really good right now.

I want the good things but I’ll take it all. I’ll take the bad things too.

Fill my lungs with your poison, show me what it’s like to love something so much it kills you.

Teach me how to give all of myself to someone just so they are satisfied, even if it leaves me crushed on the cement.

Let me become addicted to you.

My whole life is written in ink and I can’t escape the mistakes I’ve made so if you’ll have me, here I am.

I can’t guarantee that I’ll be right for you, who knows what you write with but I will be here.

Let me tell you, I will still love you after watching you kiss the lips of every person that craves your taste.

I will still love you after you steal the oxygen out of helpless gasps and sunken cheekbones.

I will still love you after your temper sets forests ablaze.

I will still love you when you suffocate me in your fumes, leaving me choking on everything I should have said to you.

I will still love you when you burn out and your ember softens against a pillow of ash, and your smell, your taste, your everything lingers in the air like a nostalgic dream that I never want to wake up from.

Let me tell you, I am forever.

I am infinite and I can create and write anything you want, even if it’s just prose on a piece of paper or a picture of the moon on nights when you’re the only good left in the world.

I can be anything you want, and if that is someone that will love you because they want to, and not because they have to, then I will be that.

I won’t quit you.

I can’t.
Brooke Nov 2018
I used to look into your eyes and wonder how I ever felt home anywhere else.

But there's a part of me that isn't the same anymore.
It's the part that died when you left,
The part that you took, and crushed between your teeth,
Wiping the blood from the corner of your mouth as you whispered,
"I'll always love you."

And if you come back, I hope it's not because you love me,
Because I only want it to be a reminder of how good I am without you.

There's a part of me that isn't the same anymore,
Because she has never been touched by your hands,
She has never been hurt by your words,
She has never been loved by you.
There's a part of me that isn't the same since you left,
And I ******* love her.

I look into your eyes and wonder how I ever felt home there.
Brooke Dec 2018
When the sun herself hides behind the sky,
And hazy nostalgia stirs fallen leaves
That whisper, as they tumble, a small sigh,
The days that I love are the days like these.

The wind, capturing every sound made,
All the utterances lost in the air,
The ground, yearning for warmth to be strayed,
Before a blanket of snow can fall there.

The trees mature and shed their hardships,
The earth, covered in red leaves to stay warm.
Frosty dawn's turn to numbing fingertips,
All is tranquil and calm before the storm.

But then the cold draws in, as dark comes
Covering autumn's beauty in sorrow,
The lakes glazed over their blue, crashing drums,
The sun ducks away until tomorrow.

Fingers are numb, they're wearing frost,
The moon, shines his snarl, chilling my spine;
Lock your doors, pull the shades, don’t pay the cost,
When the moon comes to fight, the loss is mine.

The ground, frozen solid weeps a sad song,
The dark of night laughs as bitter hearts freeze,
The moon roars his call, forever so strong;
And the nights I hate are the ones like these.
Brooke Nov 2018
Most days, I don’t know strong.
Not the lift my arm, flex my guns type of strong, because you and I both know that I can barely do a push up.
So I never really know much about that type of strong.

I’m talking about the type of strong that will keep this a secret, and still crush me.
Demand me into silence, teeth and jaw and fist.
So I will fold it and shove it underneath my pillow.
The type of strong that forces me to beg you.
And I will beg you to let me hold onto this.
Let me hold onto this like it’s the last part I have of you.
Don’t make me go to that clinic, I beg you, let me look into the mirror and see a mother, not a graveyard.

You see, I keep finding my hand on my stomach.
My fingers tracing the letters to everything their name could’ve been, on the skin under my belly button.
I press my palm against my flesh, and I can feel a heartbeat but I know it’s my own that echoes through these veins.
And at the end of the day, our hearts beat as one.
So when their heart stops, I wonder if mine will too.

I know the type of strong that will go back and forth on my decision a million times,
and I’m sorry that I keep telling you I’m keeping it,
but I can’t seem to shake this uncertainty and regret and I wish this weren’t the case.
I wish I had the kind of strong that prepared me for those two pink lines.
It breaks me that this is goodbye before I even knew hello, and I’m never going to meet them.

They could have your eyes, and they could have my nose.
And at three weeks, their heart started to beat.
And at four weeks, I was running out of my english classroom, because morning sickness decided to check in.
Now I’m sitting in social studies, and you’re sitting across from me, and a girl asks,
“Why do the abortion protestors come to a high school?”

I hope you saw my jaw clench, and my eyes close.
Because now my brain is running through everything I wish I had done differently,
and everything that I wish I had been strong enough for.

You see, I wish that I had the strong that allowed me to go against what was best for you, to do what was right for me.
But my strong just leaves me wondering if it were a boy or a girl.
My strong makes me want to go to walmart and buy those glow in the dark stars, stick them to the ceiling of my room, and call it a nursery.
My strong reminds me of when I was little, and my mom put pigtails in my hair.
My strong looks like tired eyes, in a bed made of sheets that needed to be washed two weeks ago.
It looks like a seventeen year old girl, that wants to go to graduate high school, but she has to be anxious about mifepristone, before she can be anxious about university acceptance.
My strong makes me feel like I’m losing a piece of myself, and my soul is being ripped from my body.
I don’t know a strong that is enough for what I need it to be.

My strong tells me to apologize, but I don’t know how many more sorrys I can give out.
I’m sorry to bring you into this.
I’m sorry that I told you.
I’m sorry that I’m scared.
I’m sorry that I can’t bring a little more of you, and a little more of me into this world.
That they will never see the blue skies, or the green fields, or the yellow flowers.
They will never know the sweet songs that you sing, or the warm chortle of your laugh, like a fire that burns through a forest of sorrow. They will only know my cries, and my sadness, and this black cloud that floats around me and screams storms when I hold my belly.
My strong tells me that this is more than just taking a pill.
It tells me that this is death,
do I need to write an obituary?

You tell me that I am so strong,
but the door to the abortion clinic is so heavy,
and I can barely do a push up.
This comes from a place of complete desperation. Because I was alone in my journey, and I needed someone to hear me.

— The End —