Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Don't forget your lighter. Your mother only has one and the stairs are between you. Matches aren't great, their strike catches the onomatopoeic air, and your hands will smell like birthdays. Don't leave them either, burnt out, on your white windowsill. Check your window opens before one in the morning, they don't like to be woken up. Don't panic if it creaks; guide its sleepy sash with patience and that t shirt your mother hates. Try not to think of spiders. Pile pillows by the door, loose the sheets. Your sister has very good hearing. Look at the grey wool sky, count its sparse stars. Be quiet, be still, and do not think of the boy who has kissed another girl tonight. This, is your time.
History jokes are indeed proof
that comedy
is tragedy
plus time
I can’t decide which part is worse.*

4 am, lying restlessly awake, feeling like I’m in some sort of heart free-fall, every fiber of me reaching for you and the mirage of what I want us to be.

Or

Sitting across from you in a room with friends, my stomach in knots, trying to keep my smile as smooth and cool as yours seems, working so hard to pry my mind off of memories of you and I.

Or

When we’re finally alone and the strained conversation is swallowing me like a black hole inside my chest, ******* from the inside out, the gulf of sentiments we won’t venture painfully widening the creeping chasm between us.

Or

Those songs on the radio that remind me of you, telling of what we have been, what we could be, their rhythms stirring up the strangest ripples of longing and regret and panic and isolation.

Or

The quiet moment when I catch your eye and try to read between the lines of your words and gestures, searching your receding depths for hidden traces of this same torture, wondering with mixed hope and fear if that longing still burns deep in you.

I can’t decide which is worse.

To endure it and hope it gets better.

**Or to leave and know it never will.
Her
At least let me be
the girl who doodles on her arm
because she's scared to get a real tattoo,
and the girl whose freckles bloom
like little daisies on her cheeks
to match her middle name,
the girl who leans out the window of the car,
to feel the wind kiss her face, her soul,
and the girl who sneaks out early
to write poetry in a French town,
who wears silver rings, not gold,
and sometimes laughs too much,
or too little, because,
this is also the girl
who breaks her own heart too often
because she believes that it's better
to regret what you've said
than what you haven't,
let me be her, because,
without her, I only exist.
another midnight I've seen this week:
bed times have gone from books and milk
and slightly ajar doors,
to long slogs far into the early morning hours-

-did I, did I try too hard to hold your hand?
If so I didn't mean to,
maybe the excitement of being held again
made my squeeze a little too much.

-

another morning afternoon I've seen this week:
primary education routines of get dressed
and ready for school
have been lost to
fading light showers and foaming shampoos-

-did I, did I not follow the Curtis rules?
Should I run a bookshop? Be late time and time again?
Runaway to the continent and write a novel no one wants?
Lose a wife and fall for a model?

if so, I'm sorry I'm not that.
coffeeshoppoems.com >> submit now to be featured online
Next page