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Emilee Ayers Nov 2016
crack my chest open
like an egg

this gnawing sensation
expelling from my body
like the yolk that falls from the shell
splattering on the pavement
gasping or breath from the speed
it gained to travel from there to here

throw me aside
like used *******

exhausted of worth
after finally getting whatever
it is that was living inside of me
to the other side of my body
making my purpose
more than fulfilled

bury the remains
like a dead old friend

after all, I'm dead
to myself and the way things
used to be and now it's
only reality in front of me
keeping me going until all these
ifs and buts and deferred hopes
finally have meaning

i'm more alive now
than when my body
as it were was whole.

i'm at peace.

leave me be.

i don't need your questions or sympathy
i don't need to waste any time
trying to make you feel better
about something you've
never tried to understand
in the first place

it's my turn
to be selfish

to put a stop to
the habit that i've formed
of tearing myself apart
in order to make other people
feel more at peace, just to have
them move on, happy without me.

on the contrary.
i'm not expendable as you'd make me believe
you're luck to have had
a bit of me to grace
even the tiniest time of your life.

but i'll never tell you that.
because that voice is still in my head
telling me to
remain humble and how my
life is not just mine.

people need me.
**** it up and be there.
try and try again, even if
all you get in return is
boot prints on your face again.

it's worth it.
it'll be worth it.
one day i'll see if and all
of this will make sense
someway and somehow

the pieces will fit together and
form this picture more
incredible than i could
even dream of it being
in my mind now.

have patience.
you'll see it.

sewn back together.
one boot in front of the other.
life as i know it is beginning again.
I wrote this half asleep.
it's where i find the most honesty.
Emilee Ayers Sep 2016
9.29.16 ©
I sit in cemeteries to center myself.
Filling my lungs with oxygen
While my friends lay under the earth.

What was the world like the last day they knew it?
Before it became their final resting place?
Is there anyone left to remember them?

I sit and lie and fantasize about
The incredible lives they must have lived.
Reality is most were no more than ordinary.

But to me, they bring comfort.
In an odd sort of way complex in its existence
What do they have to fear? Their lives are done.

But mine is not; not yet.
I have blood in my veins and life in my being.
What I do with these days is up to me.

I come here to remember
The lives before mine
As well as the fact that I still have mine to live.

And that is a gift
Even when it feels like a curse.
I have something in me these never get again.

The birds still sing.
The breeze still plays with the trees.
I breathe deeply.

The dead remind me why I'm alive.
when daily news
over weeks and months
reports events that  far exceed
most people’s homespun nightmares

can we react as poets
and not be seen as cashing in on the sensation
like all the media have come to do without regret?

It may be wise not to give in
to the temptation to create ******* of violence
but try to just suggest the essence of catastrophe

a lonely high-heeled sandal on the roadside
one flip-flop much too small to fit adults
a tough man crying without shame

there are events for which we don’t have proper words

this does not mean we should keep silent
Apropos the massacre in Nice on July 14, 2016
  Jul 2016 Emilee Ayers
tl b
and for the first time
see with your eyes the eyes
that are not less than you wished
but are instead clear
no, they are green
they are you
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