I'm sure you've all noticed I'm not here very often.
It's because I don't write anymore.
The girl I used to write about stopped breaking my heart.
I fell in love with someone else. Not violently, not poetry worthy.
The way I feel with her doesn't make me feel the need to use poetry as an escape.
So I'm signing off.
my tumblr is graced-lightning.tumblr.com if you'd like to continue to keep up with me.
if not, it's been cool.
peace out, my friends

1.14.15

Summer clung to September with popsicle-sticky hands,
blew her misty breezes through
the cool mornings that wanted so desperately to
be crisp.
the leaves finally fall from the willowy branches,
still soft, still green.
“love us” they cry
“we are just like you”
they are.
we are all clinging to something that has
moved far beyond us.

Autumn paid us a visit,
briefly,
without any regard for anyone who
might have missed her or
wanted her to stay awhile.
she drove by, honking her horn
“hello, my loves!
goodbye”
as she pressed the gas pedal fiercely,
leaving us with smog in our already rattling throats.

Our brief visitor will be greatly missed,
reminisced upon.
hot cocoa and mittens don’t belong here,
November is not the owner of these
specific ideas.

A melancholy feeling that you
can’t quite place,
don’t quite know where it’s coming from.
it is Winter, this feeling,
lonely hearts and shivering hands
wishing desperately for Autumn
to return once more.

i almost told you this wasn’t poetry
in my defense, it isn’t pretty
the gory bits of humanity never are.
but people in and of themselves are poems
so here’s myself for you;
call it poetry if it makes you feel better

loving you was the sound of a piano
and now when I tickle the ivories all I see is
you, laughing on the bench next to me
let’s sing together again someday,
okay,
?

i still love you,
but the misery in it is behind me.
it’s no longer tainted with your presence and
your kiss and your voice.
loving you is somehow easier
knowing you’ll never pay me back in kind.

i need you to play for me again.
take out your ukulele;
let’s cheers to hickies, sunshine and nirvana
maybe pretend we could
love each other again someday

i told you this wasn’t pretty but i guess
you could call it a poem because this is myself on paper
i told you i’d try to see the world in poetry but i guess
here I am making good on that.
visit me sometime, okay?
i’ll be tuning the piano.

I was always the kind of kid who liked to fix things
I bought myself a pink hammer when I was 8 years old
and I liked to “fix” things with it.
turns out I wasn’t all that good at fixing and I
mostly just broke things.
nobody really had a problem with it until
I broke myself and then
fix yourself!
they scream
go! nail yourself back together!
but all I really feel like doing is sawing myself in half.
I could see myself failing to fix anything,
watching helplessly with my pink hammer while they
screamed loudly, endlessly
fix yourself fix yourself fix yourself fixyourselffixyourselffixyourselffixyourself
they tried everything.
they took pliers and pried open my brain they
measured and remeasured my sanity with tape and pills
that looked suspiciously like
the bubble in those bars you use to make sure something is even
my mother and father wore safety glasses as i took an axe
to my sense of self and buried it with
a shovel bigger than the three of us
“she’s a bit of a fixer-upper” they say
as if they’re selling a house
they try to fix me up, gorilla glue me together but
it’s too little, too late
I sawed myself in half and there’s
no fixing this one.

You realized before I did that we would never fit, only collide. We weren't meant for forever.
We were meant for disaster, always.
Somewhere in my bones I knew that we clashed but I couldn't explain why and now I know.
You were red, burning with passion and I was yellow, too optimistic for our own good.
Red and yellow don't match.
they only mix to form orange,
the universal sign for danger
You were a stop sign, the truck that put out the fire in my heart, the low battery light.
I was sunny, Van Gogh's paint, the midway point between go and stop. I was SLOW DOWN I was YIELD I was a sunflower that you somehow managed to crush.
Your flames grew taller than my blooms and when there was nothing left of me to burn, you moved on to a new field of flowers.
Roses this time, pink and young and innocent.
I hope she burns as poetically as I did

this is
quiet
this is 3:17 AM, awakened by dreams of smoking illegal things with you
this is hushed whispers, bated breath, this is
waiting this is
the moment after a slap across the cheek.
this is
deep
this is the pacific ocean, hiding skeletons of sailors and pirates who
maybe never wanted to condemn anyone to this dark, damp death they
just wanted a little money for their baby girl at home this is
conversations with a cactus at midnight this is
trying to catch my breath after running to your open arms
this is
dark
feeling for your hands but catching your neck instead this is
“this place is ******* haunted, Grace”
this is holding me at the waist this is
European cathedrals on rainy afternoons this is
5’1” and 5’3” this is
tea at 7:34 AM this is
out of tune pianos everywhere I look and
lying on the floor, battered and bruised as you part your lips
ever so slightly, this is
a memorized dance, a harmony
under scrutinizing stage lights.
this is rehearsed, this is
directed, this is choreographed, this is
not a performance anymore.