f - Hello Poetry

f Jul 2019

sixteen

what do you write
when you are sixteen and appeal only to girls
who think they know the pain of heartbreak
between their morning classes?

who believe they have walked a thousand earths
in their paper-white sneakers,
and their flowing hair?

lips covered in flowers;
skin painted in gold;
they are happy, and a little bit empty

which is why they love poetry like mine,
which dresses itself in obscurity
and ****** metaphors
like this forgery could pass for anything real.

f Jul 2019

great big love

i found that you are my great big love

these are usually decisions i make myself,
roles i assign to innocent boys,
but you have filled this position regardless of my objections;
though i don’t really have any.

you have become the beat-up sneakers
that are strewn in the hallway of your house,
white and *****,
fraying at the edges

you have become the stuffed animal i bought you,
which you hold every night in your sleep
and i love the ****** bear almost as much as i love you

i see you in your sweater that hangs on the back of my chair;
i am almost too scared to wear it,
to defile its essence as something that belongs to you,
but i can not help but bury my face in it from time to time.
it is like a little pocket of you i can carry
whenever you are not with me

you are the books i lend you,
ones i now associate with the words falling from your lips,
upon which i trip;
you speak beautifully about books,
and though i struggle to keep up,
it is a soft fall that i endure,
one i will gladly endure.

you are a playlist i made
of songs that lay a roadmap of our love,
songs that remind me of different points in relationship,
though you nearly always plague my mind;

it has come to a point where everything
that happens to coincide with your presence in my life
is inherently you;
the joy i possess is you,
the warmth that swarms my body is you,
the smile tugging at my lips

and i love finding you everywhere,
because this is exactly where you belong.
in every corner of my room, of my own skin,
you are proudly displayed;
because you are my great big love, my dear,
and this is exactly where you belong.

f Jul 2019

the end

i found solace in your arms,
and peace in your voice,
in your smile, always in my dreams,
like i can't get enough of it already

i want to close shop
and tell all the past me's there are that;
this is it.
i want to rewrite every poem where i tell myself i was in love,
because nothing compares to the subtle yearning of my heart for your skin
whenever you're not around;
i am no longer in the business
of manufacturing pretty greeting-card words,
because nothing i say captures
how much i love you;
the word love alone is not strong enough.

i find myself in a blissful bubble when i'm with you,
where there is only laughter and warmth;
where you come in different flavors
but they fill me up all the same

you are sweet when we're laughing too loud in your room,
velvety and understated when i am scrubbing your chest in the shower,
clean and refreshing when you wipe my tears off my face.

but i am painfully attached to you
no matter what packaging you come in;
you are a boy whose soul is kindred and kind,
and i would love you if i had nothing that made me;
you and your arms are enough.

f Jul 2019

suicide note: a fantasy

i am dazzled by the idea of my suicide
and what it will do to you

the mother of my best friend,
who only ever saw me smile around her son
and filled her house with infectious laughter.
what would she say to my mother at my funeral?
would she even come? would she let him go?
how do you reconcile
the sweetness of a young girl
with the slashes on her wrists?

what about him?
i love you,
but sometimes i wonder if you realize
i am walking a razor thin line
between going through the motions of alive,
and death;
i wonder if the horror would settle slowly,
surreal in its weight,
or if you would be filled with panic and fear
at the realization that
you should’ve seen this coming.

the space of time between my panic attacks,
and telling you i am okay,
is too short for me to possibly be okay.
the tightness of my arms around your waist,
the fear of letting you go,
is all too telling of my loneliness.

i love you, and i don’t want you to hurt,
but what would my suicide do to you?

you, the boy i loved,
who let me bleed like it was beautiful,
like it was entertaining.
what will it be like
to finally see the life drain from my eyes?
i always thought
you ought to understand the consequences of your reckless love,
and this is not a punishment,
but what if you finally realized?

your fingers are soaked in pain,
your lips a knife’s edge dissecting me,
and i fell in love with it for so long,
but your love made me fantasize about the blood in my body
in ways i shouldn’t

perhaps you would cry,
and there would be an ache
where i used sit next to you and play with your hair,
but how soon would you forget me?

it is a dark thought,
but, mother,
what would my suicide do to you?
would it throw you off-guard?
would you pretend
i didn’t present you with all the telltale signs?
i don’t even know if you’ve stopped looking at my arms,
or if you’ve chosen to ignore the skin suffocating with scars.
how do you not anticipate your own child’s death, mother?
i am waiting for you to look at me
and see that there is so much more hidden underneath my eyes
than flowery, teenage angst;
often i am unhappy, mother,
to the point where i forget there is a tomorrow,
and i know you understand
because you only talk about your anxiety.
i love you, but this is not what family is supposed to be like, is it?
i am alone in this empty house.

perhaps my death would make me mean
that much more to you,
because all that’s left is love lost;
all there is is a vague memory of the girl you let die,
all that is gone because she is dead.
perhaps a pretty laugh,
her bouncy movements,
her sing-song speech.

but perhaps my death would be inconsequential;
how long would it circulate
before it became a whisper of a rumor?
how many would blame me for my own sadness?
acquaintances who would feel bitterness towards the fact
that they ever associated with someone so sick,
mothers and daughters who’ve placed me in a box:
this is why we don’t like depressed people.

and i’m not even dead,
but i’ve fallen in love
with the pain my suicide would bring upon you,
like it is something pretty,
like it is something to be desired.

f Jul 2019

an illusion of identity

if you shake me hard enough
that my brain liquefies and pours out my eyes
i couldn't tell you what would come out

a translucent stream of drunken mistakes,
the putrid smell of a thousand unrequited loves,
the anxiety biting at my nails,
or nothing, maybe.

maybe the things that fill my head
until it swells
are made purely of oxygen
and the belief that i am anything more
than an animated shell of a human.

nonetheless, my head throbs
with empty and full thoughts,
they resonate within my limbs,
traverse the edges of my fingers and manifest in shaky hands.

my empty thoughts,
they lead me nowhere,
walk with me in circles until i get dizzy.
i have rationalized every feeling of mine
until it's become a linear code i force myself to operate,
until it is no longer what it is

i've built myself into someone i'm not,
because i only have my thoughts,
but they are not me.
so if you shake me hard enough,
until my heart falls through my stomach,
i couldn't tell you what would come out.

f Jul 2019

pity party

it gets a little pathetic
when i'm writing poems about boy number four
and they ring the same tone as the ones before,
when their touches and words and kisses
are interchangeable
and they are reduced to nothing more than
a number

i’m throwing myself a pity party,
in honor of a new milestone;
a pattern repetitive enough that i can predict it months in advance
but do nothing to stop it
i’m throwing myself a pity party,
and you’re all invited

share your stories with one another
about dear old me,
the girl who once had the brightest smile and the sweetest hugs,
who fell slowly and hard for the idea of a boy,
convincing herself she could love him, forcing herself to love him.
how similar are your stories
about the one who thrived on your love
until she was left cold and starved?

i say she loved you, but really
you know she didn’t;
now you know you are a number on a list,
one she doesn’t even know about,
knocked down before she moves down to the next
you now know she is a master of manipulation,
for she has tricked us all into thinking she is the victim
but how conscious of her own manipulations is she?

this girl’s sleep comes in restless fits,
interrupted by images of boys that blend in together;
the one who ****** her in the dark,
the one who turned her heart into a pit stop,
the one who smiled into her eyes while he twisted a knife in her back

and you, boy number four,
the one who has already managed to break her
maybe it gets easier the more worn down she is,
the closer she is to the bottom of the list

maybe she doesn’t know there is a list,
a cut-off line,
a pattern of boys;
the harshest truth this girl has ever faced
is the inevitability of loneliness
and she is blindly going through the motions
of someone looking for love,
though perhaps she can’t even do that

so i am throwing myself a pity party,
and letting my ghosts keep me company.

f Jul 2019

pillow talk

you talk about ***
like it is tasteful,
your fingers ghosting the inside of my thighs
like it is pure,
but it is not.

you leave a trail of gunpowder,
hide explosives in the crevices of my skin,
and there is nothing tasteful
in the hunger with which you do so,
like you are both in a rush to bruise my neck
and get rid of me after.

there is nothing tasteful about the noises i make,
loud and empty to fill up this loveless space.
do not confuse these sounds
with approval;
with every ****** of your hips,
i am further disjointed from reality.
is that really me, the girl moaning like she is made of lust?

perhaps that noise,
your nails digging into my back,
my knuckles turning white as i hold onto your bed frame,
are the only things keeping me grounded

because i try not to get lost in your kisses
when you only kiss me as a prelude
to ******* me,
and i try to forget that there is a timer
on my free range of your body

still, i let you hold me down,
and i let you kiss me
but there is nothing tasteful about the way you look at me once you are done

i am not ****
but your eyes turn lazy and glaze over me
before moving onto more important things,
and there is
nothing tasteful about the way you strip my confidence

you think i am your masterpiece,
but this is a violent crime against my heart;
your *** is empty
and i don't want it anymore.