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Emma Johnson Jan 2013
1 a.m.
I decide it’s about time to go to bed.
My shivering body eagerly slips under the white down comforter,
the closest feeling to home, second to
your arms wrapped around me.
                                                             ­                                  i miss you.
Per usual, I am improperly dressed
my bare skin is cold to the touch,
I forget that 20 degree weather is actually cold
without you to curl up with.

2:04 a.m.
My decision to sleep was futile.

3 a.m.
I search for the moon in the clouds outside my window
but even the moon is sleeping, in love with the stars
who will hold it close for billions of years
until they’re dust like the rest of us.
                                                             ­                            i miss you.

3:37 a.m.
I may be restless and I may be a growing insomniac
but I have come to realize
that nighttime holds the world I have always wanted to live in:
the falseness is gone, there are no careers or school,
families have all fallen asleep
and the only ones I wish to talk to understand why
sleeping right now would be a waste of time.
The world changes after bedtime, only laughter and freedom can matter
nobody will tell me to put my clothes on,
and staying up with you
is like having my own storybook.
The traffic lights are empty, the forest is open to roam,
the sky is dark and the streetlights only light up what is necessary,
in this little town you can still see the stars,
and there’s not much to do
but when all the people lock their houses and fall asleep
and we get bored of driving around,
the little diner will still be open, empty at this hour
minus the waitress and the cook,
who I don’t think mind anyway.

4 a.m.
I imagine your mouth millimeters from my neck,
whispering things that melt the thin varnish of frost that my sparse clothes could not protect me from.

4:18 a.m.**
At this time I am positively sleepless, you’re still not in my bed but the hope never goes away.
I’m unwilling to waste the last hour
before alarms ring, starbucks opens, and the average people begin to
roam around me and I must put up with reality until it goes to bed again.
helpful critique is much appreciated! i really like the idea of this poem but i feel like it needs work
Emma Johnson Jan 2013
The moths think they are butterflies. They have never seen themselves in a mirror; they fly around the room, their wings whispering “I am beautiful, look, look, I am gorgeous.”
I can feel the moths brush on my skin, I sense the slight dust left on me when they depart. I don’t mind. They don’t know. They land on my hands, holding them, they make themselves into necklaces for me, flitting about in a circle around my neck, they sit on my shoulders and tell me stories of beautiful things.
I wish I could see the beautiful things the moths see. Through kaleidoscoped eyes everything is a magnificent painting: colors dancing, real-life objects turned into waving patterns of fractals. Nothing is real to the moths. They don’t see things as concrete, there is nothing to be taken seriously as to them life is nothing but a game.
The moths are real. They understand more about the human’s world than we do ourselves. I think the moths like me, they seem to never stop grazing my goose-bump ridden skin. I feel like I am a lightbulb in a dark room to them. I can feel so much energy pulsating through me, I must be exhaling florescent lights in place of the words that I feel I should be speaking out loud. Any words at all, the flow of captivating conversation will never be less than blissful.
But the moths can’t speak to me. They can’t hear my voice. They don’t need to, they understand.
These petite, grey-shaded, winged insects understand more than most walking, talking human beings. I can feel my connection to them like a static in the air, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck. They travel to the brightest of places, and mentally, I am flying with them. We bond, through pure understanding of the other, coexisting blissfully knowing we are in the company of creatures with whom we are guaranteed a buzzing sense of community. We are the same creatures; at this moment I cannot understand why human beings continue to take totalitarian power over all other living things. Don’t they see that they are not threatened?
It is astonishing how our species sits on a throne, screened to the one glaring advantage the rest of living beings have over us. Humans communicate greedily, so much more than is necessary, on a massive scale and with such complications that miscommunications occur frequently, evoking emotion-driven actions against others whom we feel have wronged us. The moths don’t take revenge, and the trees never would act out unreasonably.
The other creatures continue to be ever-more calm and rational than us, understanding how to remain content at all times. They only stand in the background watching patiently, leaving all others to their own peace, and giddily accepting those of us who decide to venture into the wood and lay with them. Beginning a journey into the woods means losing all faith we had in humankind. That is replaced with a comforting wholeness we feel in ourselves. We must offer ourselves up to the trees, the sun, the mammals, the amphibians, every last biological structure right down to the moths. They welcome us to their world because they know we are the few who understand, who are completely willing to become one with them.
It is a backwards world I am living in. The ones I cannot speak to understand me. Those who can, use their ill-learned language to criticize and resent me as I fly, mentally, away from the corruption that has become normal.
But I don’t care. I’m reaching into the depths of my mind and and learning to understand the human brain in every way it works. I am going on explorations more beautiful than ever perceived as possible by the outsiders. I have souvenirs by the handful: a constellation painted in my mind, a stray cloud I picked up on my way home, a *** leaf flower-pressed in an orange and blue book, a notebook filled with our own kind of knowledge, friends who have found me in these woods, with whom I possess a happy-go-lucky unity unscathed by normal human tendencies, and an alternate breed of knowledge that lives peacefully yet thirstily in every cell of my glowing body.
The moths feel all of this. We become one with each other because I have become content with myself; those who walk in the woods possess no intent to hurt and the moths feel safe. Those who walk in the woods do not walk; we fly.
16 hours later.
I awake and there are no moths. There is no trace of them. There are no trees, no flowers; the alternate world I imagined is mockingly false. The forest is no longer vivid, for it has been hidden behind clouds of smog. The vibrant lights I once saw coming from my mouth are no longer animating my words.
In the morning this society I exist in is still mind-numbingly dull. But mentally, I am perpetually flying.
Emma Johnson Jan 2013
Not being able
to kiss your tears away
for the first time,
because I was
the one whose careless heart
sent them streaming down your cheeks
in the first place

kills
me.
Emma Johnson Jan 2013
I look, appalled, at my hands
at my mouth
for the things they've done to you
denying my only promise to myself,
that you being hurt
would not be of my own doing.

Trying to tear away the skin
that holds memories
I wish hadn't happened
never works, I've learned.

But how does one,
ever forgive themselves
for something like
what i've done to you.
Emma Johnson Dec 2012
i can't believe
the things that escape my lungs sometimes
the words that fall out

because i regret them
like i've regretted nothing before

after so long, how could i
just let them escape
haphazardly

i can't believe
what i've done

i loved you two years ago when i met you
i loved you when i hadn't seen you in months
i loved you when we kissed for the first time
i loved you when i had no choice but to
try to forget you
i loved you that night
we ended up in your bed
i loved you when i told you we needed to talk
i loved you when i told you
promised that i wouldn't

but the heart does not
keep promises very well.

i'm sorry,
i fell in love.

i'm so sorry
that it terrifies me like this.
not entirely put together, not edited, just thoughts.
Emma Johnson Dec 2012
are you ever so
just blatantly terrified
because nothing is steady
like the tides moving
taking away my sand
before I could
blow it into a glass ring
woven around my finger
left hand,
second to last,
a promise withheld
no matter what.
but it fell through
the holes in my heart
taking her away from me.
a massive wave
hitting me
square in the chest,
the sudden realization
that everything changes
and she has so many things
to move onto
other than me.
Emma Johnson Dec 2012
The garbage man came
as I drank my coffee, flavors mixing
with my cigarette and
The Great Gatsby.
I watched him pick up the dumpster,
overturn it in his truck
and I thought of asking
what he could do about
my garbage, my treasures;
a torn bumper on
the corner of 11th and Montana Avenue,
a broken lucky cigarette,
proving my superstitions to be false, maybe,
and a half-full soul
trying to find its way
back into my heart,
that I gave to her
many years ago
but it wasn't my heart I wanted back,
just her, because
she at the time, was elsewhere
and that I couldn't handle.
I stayed silent as
he drove away
with things unwanted
wishing he could too
pick up the things
I so greatly miss
and return them to me.
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