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C
Emma Apr 2013
The walls of Hell are moving walls
and Hell is the shell of my body.
I can't escape the monster's calls
because they ring inside me.

The walls of Hell are solid walls
Nothing can pass through them
Imprisoned inside, my heart cries,
and paints my veins with nights passing by

The walls of Hell are silent walls
You'd never suspect them to be
as piercingly violent as they are:
The walls of Hell wrapped around me.
inspired by a nightmare
Emma Aug 2013
Every night (without her) he watches the sun set on his ceiling. Warm tendrils of light seep over the white paint like a high tide rushing onto the beach.
(He) keeps forgetting to replace the curtains she took with her.
The bed feels soft but (is) too warm; over-used.
His body leaves a crescent-shaped depression
(constantly) reaching out to the cold side of the bed
where she used to sleep.

life stretches on slowly
the previous rattle of scenery sliding past his eyes
has been reduced to a static hum
– like the sound after a rainstorm –
(falling) asleep is easier now.
Emma Apr 2013
"How are you?"
Such an empty question, with an even emptier answer:
"Good."

I'd like to tell (you) how
Everything I (see) looks disgusting to me.
Watermelon seeds are like bugs
eating away at the raw, juicy flesh.
The ground is infected with muddy snow.
The melting of it unearths carcasses of lost junk.
Leaves are discs of decay.
The wind breathes smoky, tarry clouds by
– fogging up my mind.
Tongues are like slugs; kissing is repulsive.
Bodies are malformed clumps of clay, painted with egos.
Slimy egos.
The emptiness corrodes me.
It's about to get paradoxical,
how full of caves (my) heart is,
each echoing:
"You. You. You."

I'd like to tell you
how when I think of you, my mind immediately jumps to:
Our budding tu(lips) touching.
Embracing you,
the comforting muscles of your arms like sculptured masterpieces,
sheltering me in a warm bubble.
Your breath whispering on my neck, my skin replying with static fuzz.
When I think of you even the puddles of mud look like silk.
The clouds (move) by like pillows of the sky.
Leaves, sheets of oneliness, become one
in an orchestra conducted by the wind.

I want to tell you everything
*(but you can't hear me.)
Emma Apr 2013
(I)
watched – the trees sliding past – us
blur into each other.
Rush, rush, rush
said the air
as we approached the horizon
The sky was an opaque grey;
(looked) like a cement wall.
I imagined an invisible giant placing the earth into a concrete box.
I wondered if I had ever been
a blur in(to) the scenery – (the sky) –
for someone watching me through a car window.
What was meant to be a comforting hand on my shoulder (instead)
felt stiff and contained, it felt like
fingers – were – made (of) plastic
I wondered if
parts of me were perhaps stuck
on a landscape like smeared paint
– mistakes –
I wondered if (you) my love
had ever driven past me.
If the title hasn't hinted enough
-> read the poem as it is
-> (read only what is inside the brackets)
-> – read only what is between the dashes –
-> eliminate the dashes and brackets (or if you want, eliminate only the dashes, then only the brackets, then both)

Hope you enjoy it
Emma Apr 2013
Oh, what I'd give to
be raindrops falling into
a puddle of you
Emma Apr 2013
Spring is meant for growth:
Blooming, budding, flourishing.
...Why am I breaking?
Emma Apr 2013
Life digs her fingers
in me; she's been using my
heart as a stressball
Emma Apr 2013
Sleep diffuses me.
I am unwrapped, unbodied, uncoiled.
Behind shut lids there are endless sights to see.
Time extends her fingers.  
Infinity becomes one.
The taste of water lingers.
Kilometer poles unravel.
My pulse stretches with harmony into silence.
I forget the distance of my travel.
I let the shadows drown me without defiance.
Night's blanket shelters me tenderly.
I sink deeper.
There is scarcely a bliss comparable
to the bliss of (a sleep)er.
Thoughts of a tired mind
Emma Jun 2013
"You don't wanna have stiff fingers, you want to feel the flow of
Him in them!
So stretch your fingers."
They said to Oscar.
"You'll be able to feel how vast the blue sky is and how beautiful He is if you do it enough"
And Oscar obeyed. He stretched them, and measured.
He was getting better at it and could feel a sphere of warmth in his hands as they clasped together. The flow was real, it was! His hands
glowed and eyes turned up to the Sky of Promises.
Spring bloomed on the petals of his fingers and at last
Oscar knew what it was like to hold peace in your hands.
Summer drowned him in light and Oscar
spent more time stretching than ever.
The warmth licked his legs as he ran past the world, grazing the bitter asphalt.
The tranquil ball bounced with him and snowballed with heat. Decay sank into plants
and Oscar watched as Cold fed on the soil.
Frosty grass glittered like the asphalt used to in the summer, but
Oscar's sphere got lost on the cold terrain
after he dropped it,
when he saw that the blue sky he had been promised
was not in fact blue at all and that
it would never be infinite.
Emma Dec 2012
It is raining Chopin
Reminding me that together we are an arpeggio
Alone, I am played in legato
I plant myself in every horizon and
at one end of each rainbow; the other end belonging to somebody else.
I watch the clock and can tell it is 8:00 when the train passes
but I can’t see the hands move.
It is 2012 not because of the fireworks in
limbo between December and January, but because
I can feel the red yarn in me tightening –
I have less.
Emma Apr 2013
Gentle strides of water balloon my body
in patterned cycles.
You're leading my lungs
while the air dances between us.

Love expands, swelling tides
pull on anchors embedded in my heart.
"I'm still here!" you sweepingly percuss to me.
I feel the water become denser –
your presence is amplified.

My heart sways.
Wind bites like ice where you don't blanket me.
Fragmented rays of light
hit my skin in an array of melodies.
Breathing is easy now.
Quiet now.

The horizon unwrinkles.

Your absence, the stillness of it,
carries a calm disparate from before the storm
Your tides have changed
the water and

*me
Inspired by Liszt.
Emma Sep 2013
You're a house in a field blanketed in snow
Your doors are locked and windows are closed
The chimney takes foggy breaths,
Drawn by your fireplace, fervently ablaze
I can almost feel the glow
emanating from your windows
How they look at me,
so enticingly, invitingly, I could almost mistake it as lovingly.
But I am forced to stay, deeply rooted into crystals of cold
Although your doors will never open for me.
I am incessantly yearning
for your warmth.
Emma Apr 2013
I’ve always meant to sit by the sea and write you a letter
I would acknowledge the setting
(maybe of the sun and the tables outside a restaurant)
I would try to capture the sun-soaked skin and those visionary
sparkles of the sea
Which exist only between blinks
I would try to capture them for you.
I know I'll never send this, there is
No coffee cup beside me; no seagulls
are chirping within my reach
The only saltwater streams down my cheeks
Without the idyllic canvas is it worth anything?
All love gives me now is
the stabbing and wrenching of my heart.
I wrote a letter last year
after tossing and turning.
It's much too late to send
Dead ink on a Christmas card months past its
expiration date
never left the box in my shelf
You never broke your promises, you never kept them either
So what example was I left to follow?
I wonder if I would recognize you
through a stethoscope.
Did I lie?
If I cannot remember I don’t expect you to.
I wonder if your mind ever wanders far enough
(mid-song, mid-tossing and -turning)
to reach me
to write me a letter
Another that you’ll never send
...or perhaps they are all unwritten
even worse; unthought
I wonder if you would recognize me
through a stethoscope.
More like spilling out thoughts than a poem - wrote this a long time ago at around 3 am
Emma Jun 2013
red taillights graze the asphalt,
                                                           shaving off whatever we thought
                                                         ­                                                   was now.
the violent bloom of neon sanguine
dissolves into the thick darkness,
                                   the dense night sky that the moon slices           through      
                                                                ­                                         straight onto you
                                   (so piercingly it could spark a fire)
                                   just as the silence envelopes me into
                                   bitter and total solitude
                                                        ­                                     I forget to let go, I forget to forget.
Time wraps itself around me and ribbons me with memories, maybe this is all you see when you look at me. Maybe you are waiting to unwrap me. Constellations uncoil and stars dance on the polished marble floor
freely.
effortlessly,
closer.
                                                                ­       Closer now.

Just as reclusively as the moon, watching the stars occupy her room
as undefined as the horizon swallowing the foggy spheres of red light
and as nostalgically as the night
I wait for you.
Emma Apr 2013
Punctuate me.

Let me feel complete, let me feel something other

than floating words trying to fathom themselves into sentences.

Am I here? I am here.

Let me know whether I am the question or the statement.

Be the knot in my otherwise loose laces, be the map to my otherwise lost path, be

what binds the notes together into a streaming song.

You are here. Are you here?

Let me know whether you are the question or the statement.
Emma Sep 2013
Days drift by, our pillows collecting dreams and the mind dust that trickles off during sleep.
I fulfill my needs every day and forget to do slightly more important things -
like making sure I have enough time;
time that I don't spend worrying
on not having enough time

It is five in the morning, maybe a little later.
The clocks stopped working,
or perhaps it is just that I stopped reading them.

I forgot how far away you were until
today you pulled at your side of the string
And I felt the years of distance it took to reach me
(how many things one can lose in a year never ceases to surprise me)

I can only write when I am
sleep-deprived, and the silver dust
seeps into my mind like an hour glass
that wasn't meant to be turned back around just yet.

I watch the sun tear into the darkness.
The horizon smiles at me. "You'll never reach me," it taunts.
I know I'll still keep trying.
Today my pillow is emptier and my heart is fuller.

It is so quiet now.

I can hear my heart beat against everything;
knocking on every door, hoping for someplace to be let in.
It is so quiet now that I can't ignore how lost I am.
It is so quiet now, that I can't pretend I don't hear myself.
Emma Oct 2013
I*                         I                I                   I                 I     I                                I         I      I           I            I           I    I              I            I                       I                      I                             I            I       I         I            I         I              I         I       I             I      I                    I                                            I           I
                I            I                   I            I               I              I                        I   I             I            I           I                      I                I             I                 I                     I
I                         I                   I          I              I                I       I             I   I        I
                        I                                              I                                                                                     I
  U                                      U           ­                                                 U

I fall, infinitely
bursting onto the ground,
into splashes of **U
RED
Emma Apr 2013
RED
Lion-eyes,
your gaze smears me in crimson.
I am your prey.
You boast your mane,
I shut my eyes.
But your growl vibrates through me.
The courage spills past bravery into insolence.


When I shield myself behind a mirror
you don't recognize yourself.
I am to blame.
You say,
"This is a compliment."
but all I see are
grinning canine teeth.


To you, I am always
*RED.
Emma Apr 2013
she                                                                           watched curlicues of sweeping clouds, and
        loved                                                            ­    how they painted the sky like van Gogh
                   the                                                         Line of smudged charcoal smoke severed the
                         (sky)                               ­                 blue bodies apart.
                                   when                   ­                  The wind stroked her face.  
                                               it        ­                        was cold and woke her up.
                                                     spilled                  Synapse after synapse
                                                         ­        onto         Dream after dream.
                                                                ­        the surface of the sun,
                                                                ­                                 when it was almost, but not quite,
                                                                ­         drowned by the sea
                                                                ­                  = the most visible feeling she had seen.
Toying with words.
Emma Apr 2013
S                  O                   M                   E                  W                   H                   E                   R                  E

U
  between-----between-----between-----bet­ween-----between-----between-----between-----between
S


sprouted­
a
wall

Hurdling over it used to be fun.
until it grew, and we had to mount it
but even then, the feat of
                                                                ­                                 g
                                 F                                                   n
                               A                                          i
                    ­            L        &                 b
                                      L             m
                                  I
                           ­       l      |     N
                                    c          |         G  
                                  IT
made me appreciate seeing you more

but now it has
become so big
that our voices
are barely able
to attain the pe
ak; even the m
emories of you
have trouble re
-aching me pa
st the obstacle
that i now see
instead of you
r soft, soft eyes

I miss the touch of your palm against my palm
Now I can only press it against this disdainful and cold brick wall,
hoping that you might be pressing your hand against the same brick,
just on the other side.
hoping that my warmth might eventually sink through to you,
that my rain/tears might corrode the clay
hoping that maybe, maybe, maybe

you will hope the same thing too.
Emma Jun 2013
I had my heart broken
By a boy who likes to pretend
That he never liked me
-- except my heart didn't really break,
because it was never his.

It was more like I was lonely, and he was there
so I let him hold me and, he let me hold him
-- and explained to others that
"this is my way of showing I care, but I don't really, truly care,
I don't love her"
"I don't have feelings for you" --
he told me after he had picked up the phone
this girl called (maybe another me)
I just said I didn't care and stared at the ugliest leaf I've ever seen

So I didn't really have my heart broken
But it's easier to say I did
and more exciting, tragic
more romantic to say I did
Emma Jun 2013
Instead of a bell jar
I am trapped inside an hourglass
Sand scrapes my skin
unsurfacing memories of
your voice, your eyes,
faded images of me looking into them

Dust rains on me incessantly
eroding the shield I worked so hard to maintain
Drops of you grasp tightly onto me,
your nails are grappling hooks in my skin

The past swells with each dropping grain,
becoming heavier, until
your pulling weight unravels me.
Emma Apr 2013
(i)
First gaze: the arms of your waves
choke me
I swallow an abyss of blue.
Just as I am about to hit the bottom
your voice brings me up, an anti-gravity
I float up to the surface
Starry, starry night
I realize that stars come from waves of the deep, blue, endless
  o                 e                 n               a               c    
                c                a                n                e                o
created by refracting rays of light from the sun, the real sun, a sun
I had never seen before
Some of the saltwater is trapped in my lungs,
fingers of light poke their way into me
I am shining with brilliance
the burning glow seeps through skin, bones and heart,
while your hands carry me, tenderly embracing.

(ii)
You told me to forget, so I forgot myself.
as soon as I stopped looking at the hourglass
the words evaporated out of me.
I watched as my condensed
voice spiraled up into the air - silencing me
during sleep a cloud appeared
above me;  the sponge absorbed
my vaporized words.
it didn't take long
(the sand had not hit the bottom yet)
for the cloud to grey

(iii)
Rainballoons burst
onto the street of regret
The scabrous asphalt glistens
memories of unspoken emotions
(like the sweet touch of your gaze)
flash by as lightning strikes
... the only illumination here.
Emma Jul 2013
I remember when we wrote our names on each other's arms.
the ink sank deep into our skin,
enough to seep into our veins, tinting our bloodstream
I felt your presence within me.

…But eventually even permanent marker fades away
When the black curves of your signature chipped off of me
and your name washed out of my body

– that's when I realized you wouldn't stay

— The End —