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Ellie Belanger Sep 2016
15 years ago today
I was ten
And kids were getting pulled from class
Taken home by worried parents
And all the kids were watching the TV sets
In their classrooms
Except for my class
We were not allowed
The teacher
mrs. coyer
Said
"You all see soon enough. It'll be everywhere."
And I hated her for not allowing us to know
But when I got home
And I did know,
I understood
She was trying to protect us
From the image and the terror
Of death.
29
Ellie Belanger Jan 2015
29
A slither of Spanish Moss arcs up,
dances like a snake-
but my tires pummel pavement
in the dark and windy wake

of

mankind's mechanical hand!
like a five-pronged pencil sharpener,
bringing elements into focus
by scraping them away
bit by bit,
fitting wood and stone and earth
into blue-printed plans in order to
get
whatever it is,

you want.

Two yellows lines and solid white
are all that keep me in line
tonight.
The darkness shrugs,
knows it's all
right.
driving poem
Ellie Belanger Apr 2017
If every body rolls down the hill
And never seeks to climb again
These body becomes part of the ground
And lessens the hill on one side.

Essentially, if everyone fails to get back up
There is no hill to roll down anymore.
Ellie Belanger May 2023
You will lay yourself into me like so much brickwork,
building and sealing each hard-fired thought and feeling,
stapling old wounds shut with smiles and glittering eyes,
your lips stealing into mine, welcome thieves.
I would like to resist you,
to turn my shoulder and laugh; not cruelly,
but with self-assurance that this is all just play.
But when you place your hand against my face and pull me close,
and I feel the warmth of you against the warmth of me,
the truth of it all spills across my soul,
leaving bright stains of gold that shimmer in the new day's dawn.
Yes, all things new. Yes, all things old.
Yes, all things you and I.
Ellie Belanger Dec 2015
I'm sitting on the carpet of my rented room
Swatting neurotically at gnats and fleas that may
Or may not
Actually be there,
On my arms and on my face.
The only proof are the little red bites,
Up my left arm and across the bottom of my chin, where they stop.
As if my blood boils while I sleep, leaving little red marks to show that I need to
Chill out
Calm down
De-stress
But I'm
in distress,
Destroyed.
I need a higher up.
I need a voice that speaks with more experience,
With firm understanding,
With the knowledge of everything.
And I can't seem to find it in Bibles, Torahs, Quarans, or other holy scriptures.
I only hear it whisper from old history textbooks,
I hear it only
Chiming softly like drowned out cymbals from the radio talk
I only see it peripherally in my rear view mirror,
Can only taste it as an after taste of many drinks.
It is ribonucleic acid,
It is thymine, guanine, adenine, and cytosine.
It is the carpet of my rented room.
Ellie Belanger Oct 2017
The lines of distinction wear thin.
Where does the wave of influence stop and I begin
and where does my own wave begin,
what shore does it hit?
"No man is an island"
said Jon Bon Jovi, in a dream
illustrated by Nick Hornby.
I am no island.
I am no man.
Where does the string end and begin?
everything tangled up in fruitless plans
Ellie Belanger Mar 2017
Seven serpents all in their own wicker baskets
Slithering, sleeping, curling and seeking
And a withered old man with skin
Red with ochre and brown with sun
Sits cross-legged on the dark earth floor of his hut
And waits.

Each serpent has a name, from left to right they are
Andromeda, Cyrus, Diochenes, Libratti, Nigellus, Fordham and Justus.
Whichever found their way out first would be able to tell the old man something
About the world waiting ahead.

So,
As the late afternoon sun baked the sparse shrubbery around his canvas tent,
Dyed orange and yellow and red by the clay and dirt and wind and rain and sun,
He waited and watched the seven wicker baskets.
Some shook occasionally, others stayed still the entire duration of the waiting.

But just as the bottom of the sun hit the edge of the horizon,
Fordham slipped his sleek, scaled face from the basket, flicked his tongue twice, and sailed smoothly between the two errant ***** of tent which held the entrance taut.

The old man released the souls of the other six from the bodies of the snakes
And gathered his travelling things;
A hat, a walking stick, and an old tanned sheep's bladder filled with spring water.
The hat spread out wide over his head,
And pooled in a large circular shadow far from his feet.
The sun was nearly set.
He began a thick, slow burning fire, and took his trail to the beach,
Thinking that it might be his last
Time ever seeing the ocean,
Listening to it speak.
Ellie Belanger Feb 2017
She reasoned
That when it was all "said and done"
She'd know that she did the best she could.

"Trees do not uproot themselves for your pleasure,"
She told herself.

"They are uprooted because they must be,
By wind or rain or decay, or for want of money."
Her heart sank slightly.
"But they do not take commands."

A pebble rolled grittily between the rubber sole
Of her shoe and the slumbering asphalt.
She watched it ricochet off into the dark tree line.

"I will climb trees," she thought, and for the first time in days
She felt herself
Smile.
Ellie Belanger Dec 2015
My canvas is the same as yours
Just white, solid surface
Made to fill with shapes and patterns
Of varying sizes.

The only difference is that
You use more colors
To paint your truth
And I use more words
To paint mine.

Some of us got lucky
And found what makes us
Work
Some of us still wonder

But life is art
And we paint it with our tongues
And with our eyes and hands.

Don't argue with me anymore
About whose paintings
Are
Better.
Ellie Belanger Jan 2015
in a house full of

                                  nothing

the camera
l
u
r
k
s
like a ******,

silently

                                                     watches

the floor weep into it's
--------------------------------------FOUNDATION----------------­----------------------------

and the knock!
                 knock!
                   knock!

coming from the                                                              ­  
                                                                                                         closet door

echos
  chos
   hos
    os

and we sit
and stare
at
heart-winning photographs;
the children we used to
be

                                                       we  silently

seep in the remembrance;

narcissus
was
   not
     in
       love
with himself

he was
  in
    love
       with
         h-h i-i s-s   s-s h-h a-a d-d o-o w-w,
the perceived


                                                        nothin­g


Just a trick
of  -   -   -   light
f
a
  l
    l
     i
      n
        g

out of books
like
l
e
  a
   v
    e
     s

of emotion,
like

F

       A

                 T

                              H

                             ­             O

                                                 ­         M

                                                     ­                      S

                                                   of suffering

                                                /  T / O / R / N /
from your
l  i  p  s

like black tar on your
s   k   i   n  

camouflage
for
the



                    A              B                 Y                      S                       S
I just finished reading House of Leaves.
Ellie Belanger Feb 2017
I know your heart,
Only if it is like mine.
And if it is I know your hurt.
I know you hurt for others.
I know you hurt for things untouchable
But that can be felt by all.
You yearn for betterness.
Know of its existence by the dance inside your bones
And the song inside your soul.
And this world is a bad world
For the ones that feel
And think the way we do.
But it isn't time for hatred,
Because hatred has no room for goodness.
Remain vigilant not only in thought
But in action
Love is not the act of ignoring violence,
Bigotry, sexism, war
Love is the act of overcoming.
We shall overcome.
Ellie Belanger Jul 2017
I wake up slowly
like slow-motion, like soft jazz,
like every movie you've ever seen
about tragedy,
where the main character fades in from black
and
the sound of a cell phone ringing gets louder as the camera focuses
and the person,
let's call it a her, and let's call her Sally
Sally
opens her eyes
and it's like a mist or a fog still
for a few seconds
which are their own unique eternity and existence
and then Sally answers the cell phone
says "hello?" in that groggy, confused way people do when they've just woken up
and then the room is quiet
and then Sally's head is full of ringing
and you never know exactly what was said on the line
because of all the ringing
but you know it's bad news
because the next scene
Funeral
or
Crying in a bedroom
or
Blankly staring off into space.

I used to hate those scenes in movies.
I always wondered what was said
over the phone.

But now I understand.
Because bad news hits so hard sometimes
we can't remember the exact words that were said
only the dread.

Only the dread.
Ellie Belanger Sep 2016
Her smoke moves like Spanish moss,
Blue-gray tendrils intertwining
Around the shining plastic beads slung low on her wrist,
As she takes another liberal sip from her Budweiser bottle
and does her best to ignore the man she came here with tonight,
he's telling the barmaid about how he got the scar on his right cheek,
And I know parts of their story,
But the thing that troubles me most
Is that I'll never know how it ends.
Ellie Belanger Jul 2017
Instant relief in a world of instant everything
It seemed impossible but now seems obvious,
As everything does in hindsight.
Of course, of course,
I must retain my walls,
Boundaries high and low, far reaching
As Hadrian's conquest,
Probably an echo in my blood,
Brought down through generations,
Only to be changed now
In a world too full of information,
Scattered like bags of ashes across the face of global communications and user friendly internet.


Ancestry battles now
Mutation maybe
And the cry goes out,
To remedy instant electronic relief.
And not have frescos devoted to iPads
When our civilization becomes dust.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2018
they say “you don’t belong to anyone”.
and it’s nice.
It’s a nice thing to say.
even if it’s not true.
Yes
I am no body’s property
I am a citizen
A woman
A student
A teacher
A worker
A dreamer
A writer
A singer
Sometimes
A poet

But I belong to
And belong with.

If I did not,
I would be as free
and as lonely
as nothing.

For even the space between electrons
Make the atoms what they are.
Even dust and dirt hurtling through space
will one day collide with another matter.
Even the loneliest whale,
Singing it’s song to itself
belongs to the ocean.

So when the man I love says
“You’re mine”
I think
“That’s fine.”
I don’t mind
belonging.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2017
When all of this is said and done
I still won't regret all of the time
I spent loving you.
Ellie Belanger Oct 2017
Poetry is
extremes.
You never read a poem
filled with middleness.
Even a poem about a
ham sandwich
is either passionately for
or against.
Ellie Belanger Nov 2016
She asked if I could I said "yes but
I won't."
She asked why not, laughing all the same,
And I said "because I
Prefer not to."
Then she got really serious,
Her eyebrows scrunched down hard toward her nose
And she said "you're on
Borrowed time."
I asked her what she expected me to do about that
And she said "live more."
Ellie Belanger Oct 2014
my stomach is an empty pit
hard and well-lined with the stories
of a thousand nights of hunger games
where you play to eat and sleep
you lose and die, shuddering as your organs
fail
one by one by two by two

I'm just wishing for the turkey dinner
the crackers and cheese
the milk and water and juice
that sits untouched on grocery store shelves
too expensive for me to take
and fill my body up
Ellie Belanger Feb 2017
Relax past participle in order to
Accelerate mass particles
And innervate long dead articles
Of thought once thought tried and untrue.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2018
There’s a hole in my heart that’s bigger than Texas
And all the words gushing out remind me of exes
And late nights not sleeping and half-written texts that
I never sent to you.

There’s a sun in the sky that’s hotter than heaven
And the heat index creeps up way past eleven
Humidity high enough to turn fifteen into seven
As the party finally ends.

There’s a worm on the sidewalk that’s been rained out
And I wonder if he knows anything, if he has any doubt
Or if he just slithers and scrunches his way about
Careless of the gravel.
Ellie Belanger Dec 2014
she sinks to her knees like the setting sun
all reds and golds and streaks of purple-blue
and weeps for the things and the places she has lost
just a child, steeply barefooting around gnarled upturned roots
afraid that if it rains again
she might never be able to find her way back.
Ellie Belanger Dec 2014
To the man with the sword
to the man with the plough
to the man with the wife
with whom he must row,

everyone sleeps
from the same pool of eternity
and walks closer each day
to it's shores.

From the woman with the rings
to the woman who wears rags,
from the lady who sings
and makes puppydogs wag,

everyone eats
from the same grainy earth
and toils in the soils until death
from birth.
Ellie Belanger Feb 2017
The woods were all shafts
of late afternoon light,
slipshodding through canopies and across singing marshes
of toads and crickets,
dripping as warm honey drips,
Collecting in angular golden pools,
Much like how delicate gold chains might fold over and into themselves in order to
Reflect,
We reflected that the day was nearly done,
And we held hands as we walked back home,
And you told me things that made my heart expand,
And now you are gone
And it rests
With an ache that is wholly
Unfamiliar.
I'm just a pile of thin chain, made brass by neglect.
No,
I haven't stopped thinking about you
Yet.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2017
Moldy car, moldy car.
I have driven thee so far.
Almost up
to one-fifty thou.
So why should you start flooding now?

Egyptian curses? Fire, flood, and plague?
I saw a locust beetle the other day,
it chased me 'round the front sidewalk
and buzzed against my head.
I screamed and ran away.

But now empty, save for water,
I will smother you in salves
oils and vinegars and soaps and
dry, dry towels.
I will hug you warmly, crisply
scrub you of your mold.

I know you're getting old,
moldy, moldy car.
But I would still like to drive you
far, far,
far.
Ellie Belanger Feb 2017
If I cut you from my life
Like an image from a family photograph
Your absence would still exist
But it would lose your features
Make you into empty space

As nameless and yet as true as the heart
Which beats wildly inside me
As I imagine a new, strange lover's eyes
Meeting mine for the first time

And how
as we share our first drinks,
He'll ask me about you
And I won't remember the words I once said
To describe you
Because how do you explain something
That isn't there
Ellie Belanger Aug 2018
This end marks the beginning
Just another page written
Edited into a new story
A continuation
But in a different language
In a place yet unseen
So that all the tears cried
Out of fond farewell
Can be the ink
Of this new chapter
Ellie Belanger Feb 2016
the car wash plays music over two tiny, square speakers, one mounted to either side of the vending machines.
It usually plays modern pop music hits and misses,
But today it's playing Elvis.
Today it's playing Suspicious Minds.
Today the sun is shining and the sky is blue.
All the washing stalls are occupied.
Silver, blue, and two black cars are getting clean today.
And I sit across the lot, waiting to work the rest of my shift,
Watching the day turn,
As House of The Rising Sun begins it's turn on the car wash loudspeakers.
Ellie Belanger Nov 2016
The space and time between who I am and who I was
Isn't really real, says quantum theory
It's all happening at once
Just a cacophony of every everything that ever was
Exploding simultaneously into and out of existence, just
Bubbles squeezed into one another, growing larger with each input,
And our brains can only receive the signal of this three-dimensional, one-way version of things,
Can only translate it's movements into the illusion of straight time
Can only hopelessly trouble itself with relatively unimportant matters
Like the physical, emotional, ridiculous distance between myself
And you, my sweetest, loveliest darling,
Who are so perfect and so fluid
You might as well be the only matter
That ever mattered.

Except that maybe distance is what makes my heart yearn for you, maybe it's
Not some romantic magic formed in the dust of ancient stars,
Which whirled and grasped in the post-nova, until sinking this way and that, forming bonds and making plans,
Just like any other college graduate,
Never expecting to end up as part of a human being billions of years later.
But then, when do we ever live the life our educations prepared us for?
Hardly ever.
Right on down to the particulars.
Thinking about it.
Ellie Belanger Mar 2016
The air is still, and the sky flooded
gray.
Green things reach up while black things decay.
Cars hum past, bothered by delay,
And fifty years ago today,
It was Easter Sunday,
And the sun was high and bright,
Golden in the sky,
And children screamed with delight,
As they found many-colored eggs
And devoured chocolate pies.
But then
Their shiny shoes got stuffed in closets, easter memory forever now,
The houses that were here remain,
But the families are all gone somehow.
The air is still. The sky flooded gray. It is a dreary, weary Easter Sunday.
But God wanted it all this way.
Ellie Belanger Dec 2016
Wouldn't it be nice,
I thought today.
Wouldn't it be nice
to shelve my worries,
In the manner of shelving bad books;
Poor prose, hackneyed hooks,
sold to Rome but the Romans won't look,
Yeah, that's a good metaphor for what I think about,
You,
Me,
my dearest Society.

And then I saw that I could stop
And let my observations drop
To sit and drain into the earth
So that I have nothing to rehearse.
On the day or the days that I
Find love not written in the sky
But singing in the bubble-pop
Of brief awareness, before all's lost,
I think

Yes.
This is how eternity feels.

But eternity ends before it begins
For a soul reused, recycled, made
Bare by mechanical-biological sins.

And your soul must be like mine,
I think with the fire of a desperate, jealous lover
How could it not be? I can tell by
The way that you smother,
And your mother,
Who sent me messages in my dreams,
Still tells you
No
When you drink to me.
So here here,
Is a toast,
To the open, balding sea,
May it swallow up you
And may it swallow up me.
Ellie Belanger Sep 2016
When I see the people abandon their old American Dream,
I read about their travels, their hungers and their happinesses,
I wonder if it is
madness
or if it is
love
which has inspired their souls
to commit the ultimate treason-
the pursuit of freedom.
Ellie Belanger Sep 2014
I can see every spark
the way they ride and collide
along the thin filaments of air
that hang between us

god, they're bright
make my eyes wide,
my heart beat fast,
like nervous tapping toes
clattering against the sunk skin
hung across my bones.

these minute electrical bridges
are instant inertia from our kinetic desires
and when distance makes them sink
into stone and asphalt, short-wave
feeling,
I wonder if you're still
sending sparks up,
still surviving,
a man on a crowded island
signaling for me
telling me in short bursts
of silent sparking space
that you're ready.
You want me to be standing
on the same shore,
and
all I need to do is
follow the trail of wispy white
words
that seem to snap and crackle
like ghost whispers
when we smile.
Ellie Belanger Sep 2015
I see a monster
It is eating spaghetti
It is a good thing

I'm glad that it does
Not eat me or my brother
He likes spaghetti

We asked him his name
And he grumbled intensely,
"I'm Mr. Monster!"

He always came in
After a quarter past ten
And raided our fridge.

Frederiksburgville Town
Didn't usually have monsters
But they had pasta

And so the monster
Told the little children things
About from where it came

And it sang a song
That was very short and long
And it went like this:

Gobbledegook gobbledeedee
Fricasha bulungo tirimasu wings!

The children sat stunned
It was a horrible song
You can't sing along.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2017
cinder block museum trapped skirt monlogue, caught underneath layer after layer of sediment and time, beholding nothing else save itself, the abyss, Nanu, free range closer, unargumentative and sweet.
Golden dapple sunlight
red apples scattered like fat rubies
on the front lawn.
Summer dawn sleeping. A campfire waiting to be lit. Sudden fractured lights and cool breezes. Ripples across a pond, as birds rise up and across. Worship. Song. Music to heavens, for the heavens, from the heavens, circlet complete.
Radium halos.
A brown sphere rotating in space. Celestial stairway wooden door.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2019
What speaks to you?
The tongue varies - but tastes,
Tastes, my dear,
They change slowly.

Is it the touch of warm skin?
The sashay of cascading hair
and the pleasant popping
Of undone buttons?
Mortal desires
Have mortal consequences,
My dear.

Is it assurance in your wealth?
Do you long to never worry
About the poverty that oppresses?
You can have much but never
Have it all,
My dear.

Would that these words
Could speak to you
And cause a shift
Deep within your soul
If such a thing exists,
My dear.

But my tongue is twisted.
So it goes,
My dear.
Ellie Belanger Mar 2016
Here it is again.
That murderer of smiles.
The truth of my feelings
going and making you feel sad again.
I keep apologizing, and I can feel that it only makes you want to
push me away, as far away as possible.
And I keep wondering
why do I do this?
You're not the first friend I've lost to ***,
or lack thereof.
You won't be the last.
Should I spend my life alone
in order to forego the risk of hurting
the ones who would spend time with me?
The ritual of befriended and abandoned
has left me feeling like
there is no one like me,
not in the whole world.
When I spend my day with you
I love you
even if I never **** your ****.
When I buy you beer you like
I love you,
even if you never show me off to your family.
Is my love any less
because it comes from my spirit
and not my body?
This world is a scary place.
Yes it is.
Ellie Belanger Nov 2016
The wretched sound
I mistook for tires squelching flat against pavement
Is actually the timely torrent of water
From a broken sprinkler head
Four houses down the street
First soft wet dribbles
Then increasing pressure
Until twenty or so seconds of geysering
Then nothing for ten seconds
Water pours loudly into the soaked mud
And everyone else sleeps.
Ellie Belanger Sep 2014
When I can't take the silence anymore
I type my little message,
send it to your cellular device
"Goodnight, sleep well."
When I really want to say
"I love you, sweet dreams."
And a few minutes later you say,
"Oh yeah. Good dreams."
And I want to kiss you,
smile at you, eat frozen raspberry yogurt
with you,
and I can't so
I guess I'll go to sleep.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2017
Oh to fill my face with grace
So patiently flowering,
Kindness growing in smiles and
Bright green streaks woven into
The murky coffee brown of my eyes
Like a timelapse of a million moments of wisdom and compassion
Guidance received and given like water rained and evaporated and rained and evaporated etc., etc.,
A cycle of beauty both physical and spiritual
Both reflecting one another
And the golden sunlight of healthiness dripping from my footsteps, lighting solar lawn lamps as I walk past,
Undying neverland my body so small will be,
If being so full of grace, I could achieve.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2016
My guilt is a sad song that is catchier than Spanish influenza
I press it down and up, like levers on a strange machine
But the fluctuations are constant,
Always teeming high and sweeping low,
But never
Ever
Gone.

I guess it is conscience,
My moral discontent,
Which breeds this inner animosity,
But this is only data
And would be best used to implement a constant rotary of ways to help others
Rather than damning myself.
Ellie Belanger Nov 2016
Emptied pockets, not wanting.
Laid down like soft blue rabbit's ears
At the flanks of the inside-out jeans draped on the floor.
Two grey and blue socks puddle at the legs like
decayed fruits, sunken and sour smelling
and the sound of you;
Breathing deeply in your calm slumber,
reminds me of vast oceans full of gray
and warm sunlight on sandy beaches,
And it is the gray of your eyes and the sunlight of your touch.
Ellie Belanger Jun 2017
"You have heart, girlie," said the lady.
I smiled but I thought,
"Ma'am, my heart is lazy."
I can't make it love
Anymore than I can make it beat,
But I can make it hurt and crack,
Like records on repeat.
Ellie Belanger Dec 2016
So,
I'm usually pretty good at deflecting those gray-sky feelings,
But today I reflected them, and they really left me reeling
Because there ain't no party like a pity party,
And a pity party don't stop.
It just fades,
Unlike these feelings I have, feelings
For a man who makes my pulse quicken
But my heart ache,
And before I go on about heartbreak,
Remember;
Pity party don't stop.
It just whispers,
Strange and terrible little things,
Or long and loud screams of dissent,
It'll never be about you. It'll never be about me.

I watched a guy I like walk out with a girl who walks out with everyone.
I watched the ***** of trash sink into the rot of garbage in my mother's living room.
I watched a truely wonderful woman cry because of a young woman's undue scorn.
I watched a good friend cough until his face was red, and his legs were wobbly. I watched him retch.
I watched the food in my fridge slowly rot, untouched.

Don't stop.
Ellie Belanger Sep 2016
If the world be ever changing,
Ever rotating on its wobbly axis,
Then I,
As constituent and citizen of the world,
Be ever changing too.

I was born hot, and wet, and loud, the last day of June.
And now I have grown,
And I have grown cold,
Because the hurt of learning
The pain of change, and the disappointment,
Has eaten to oxygen from the flame of joy
I was born holding
In my chest.

Were that I could find ignition within,
Some magic bit of unlockable truth,
rather than casting out my net of questions,
And attending to the ones who bite.
Ellie Belanger Nov 2019
At the corner, waiting to turn.
His hand in my hand
but I’m still looking for
someone,
distracted by the dream fading.
I need to wake up,
I know.
But it feels so nice
when you visit me
sleeping curled tight in my covers,
and have grand and tragic
adventures on my behalf
as we chit-chat in the slumbering dark.
Oh! The tug is tugging
his hand is pulling
it’s time to turn.
I can’t help but to look both ways
for your cool asphalt shadow.
Ellie Belanger Jun 2017
I am scared that you have pushed me away;
Deep within yourself, scorned me.
I feel it in the empty space between us,
A hovering buzzing loneliness that grows larger and louder as it feasts on the decay of electric signals we once sent,
I am
Becoming trapped in the vacuum of silence which has followed
Letting the words I think you feel leave me hollowed
And it would be better if I just said,
I don't care,
But it wouldn't be the truth


So there,

So there.
Ellie Belanger Feb 2017
Asexuality?
Nah,
I am the Bartleby
Of ***.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2016
It has been ages,
Whole geologic stratos of time arrayed by color and not by year,
Since I have breathed deeply and loved warmly and felt that a fire was burning for me in someone's bedroom window.

But I feel the moment approaching,
And though scared and unsure I may be,
I ache in wait for the inconsolable events about to hit,
Knowing that there is new life during and after it has come.
Ellie Belanger Aug 2014
The rain fell with the night,
all groaning thunder and vociferous lavender lightning
the water staining all it touched like old black ink
streetlamps dissolving under and into darkness dripping wet
and I watched from the cold side of a second-floor bedroom window
breathing onto the panes and drawing smiley faces with my thumbs

When the rain had finally stopped,
I was still sat there,
still thinking about how wonderful it would be
if you were on the cold side of this second-floor bedroom window
with me.
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