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Em Glass Nov 2013
acquaintances pass
and eyes meet
instinct happens
       (heartbeat)
because maybe all
they need is a
smile
you didn't know
you remembered
how to do that
no one will help you if you look this happy
yes
Em Glass Oct 2013
When I was seventeen
I'd come home from school every day
and hope the house would be empty
so I'd have somewhere to pour into.
To pour all the things people
inadvertently filled me with

And all day long I defied the laws
of surface tension at the rim of my cup.
With nothing to hold them in, things
somehow just kept piling up.

I drove to school and when the faint
smell of gasoline met my eyes I
opened the windows until all the lies
were sliced away by the cold air.
What terrified me was that as it's coming
you can't see gasoline.

I breathed the freezing air in
and the gasoline out through the open window
and the passing cars said I dare
you to survive being this scared of
what you can't see.
Because people fill you up
past your brim without seeing
the way that your limbs are holding
things in place light years above that
little lip of water that can sit above the rim.

The headlights of the cars join in now
and they say you are not a cup.
How do I know if they're lying?
Headlights only show you what's right
before your eyes, and they expect you
to make the whole trip that way, farsightedly blind.
They say, you have so much tension that
you don't know what's yours and
what you pulled away from others
so you hold on to all of it and it
ever extends that little lip of water
that can sit above the rim.

And now the colored traffic lights chime in.
They say the irony of surfaces is that you
can't see what's inside because of them,
so if everyone is drowning beneath her own
surface tension you'll never know.
People are too hard to read.

I dare you to survive being this afraid
of what you can't see.
I wrote this poem when I was seventeen.
I intended it to be spoken word.
But spoken word cannot be seen.
Em Glass Oct 2013
I wrote about her
in an essay
and never once
used her name
and she was she
and I was me
and no one knew
including us two

And then I asked
the world to
read it and the
page came back to me
sanitary
full of cross-outs
well-read and heavy
and looking tired.

And not a
single person
asked who
she was
Em Glass Sep 2013
no one in the water yet.
the smell of chlorine cuts
the noise, which is so loud
you can hardly remember why
everyone is here.
shadows step on you,
the pressure growing as
the sun sinks. you want
to sink with it.
instead, you outrun the noise
and you dive.

You slice the water, slash it, push it
behind you, but it never fights back.
You slide through the water and it
caresses you softly, as though
it has been clinging to the sunlight
all day, just for you.
You cup your little fingers, hands
slapping the surface. The sounds
of the people and their shadows
alternate with the fast-moving silence

of underwater.
At the deep end of each lap the ground
falls away, but you feel safe.
Air would have let you fall.
With each breath you are more eager
to plunge back into the warm
support of water. Breathing
is a hassle.
When your limbs ache with a pleasant
soreness you cannot ignore, you drag

yourself out of the water.
Gently, it tries to pull you back.
The rippling splashes fade into
Where they come from. Whatever
you throw at it, water can heal
its own scars.
His scars would not
heal. Water is the universal solvent,
and he needed to dissolve.
You don’t know him.

You know only the cold hand that
reached into your heart
and twisted it,
painfully, on its axis as you watched
Grandmother’s eyes when she
mentioned him, in passing,
by accident.

But the noise,
then the silence—
you can understand
why he wanted this.

It was the faint smell of chlorine
on your skin; that’s
what reminded her.
Not five minutes after your
wet hair had begun to dry,
her tears spilled over and
ran down her cheek.

(Fight or flight,
air or water.)

You told her
they were there
to stroke her face.
Em Glass Sep 2013
So I tied the string
you gave me
around my ankle, and
I left it there
forever

which was foolish of me
because nothing is forever.

I hope the pieces did
not end up in the shower
drain. I hope they're still
in Town Square being
blown in the wind
and driven over and
kicked by shoes.

I hope a bird picks
up the tattered remains
and adds them to his nest
so that they give the
faded familiarity you gave me
to another life form.

That would be nice.

Now there is only
the sensation of nothing
where there was, for so long,
something

and when I wake up the next
morning the sensation
is gone and bare ankles
are the norm again.

Relief I did not notice
from pain I did not feel
and now the pain is gone

it's not pain if you don't feel it.
There are a couple things that literally terrify me and forgetting things is one of them.
Em Glass Sep 2013
Rain magnified the words
on the page and then drifted
away, taking bits of them
with it; ink swirled and
dissolved in the drops
that soaked into the earth.

There are worse ways to
have your copy grow faded,
crumpled pages;

like a child in the meadow
of a fairytale I dance in
circles as the rain comes down,
because water is constantly
cycling.

There is, within the confines
of this planet, literally no
limit to where this rain could
be from.

I could be dancing
in a shower
of words
Em Glass Aug 2013
I was scared
you'd forget me
but now I'm
scared I'll
forget you
first.
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