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May 2018 · 272
body on strike (pt. I)
hadley May 2018
sometimes my mouth forgets how to form words of honesty
i look at the boy and i say
i do not need his love
and what i mean is
the strand of his hair that is perpetually out of place
feels as significant as a misplaced set of car keys
i think about the boy and say to myself
you are okay with being alone
i am okay with being alone
and what i mean is
i would channel all of the breath in my lungs for a moment of being held like i was something meaningful to another person
like the warmth of my blood was somehow tangible outside the thin tissues of my own skin
sometimes i wonder if my body will go on strike
lose form altogether at the lack of contact
become ambiguous out of lonely
but my lips curve into a smile when i ask how his day was
and they forget to reverberate back into place once he loses interest
Jan 2018 · 252
ode to new year's eve
hadley Jan 2018
i refuse to burn an effigy for every boy who won't kiss me at midnight
i will not envy the taste of a liquor soaked tongue
of an empty promise wrapped in empty virtue
a perfect parcel, forgotten by morning
Dec 2017 · 311
rain
hadley Dec 2017
on certain days
i feel the rain swallow me whole
wet blades of grass in my sneaker
laugh at each step that i take in the wrong direction
i'm 17, and i spend a lot of time thinking about his spine
how his voice sounds deeper
when i hear it in my sleep
which is to say
that things still manage to morph themselves beyond recognition
even when they aren't real
i'm 17
and i love poetry
because it allows me to narrate
things
even when they aren't real
like
it is through the graces of some god
that my shoulder blades still sit parallel to the ground beneath me
as if to say
you
are real
even when not pressed under the weight of his advances
even when you lay
in the stomach
of the rain
Aug 2017 · 426
eclipse
hadley Aug 2017
that day, i stared directly into the eclipse
felt it burn and melt the celluloid of my retina
but what else is a romantic to do?
your ex-lovers could fill a room
and one touch from you is enough to intoxicate my blood and bone
for weeks
i really wish you had kissed me
that night
with my hands smelling like gravel
and your teeth looking painted with promise
a tiny militia
last line of defense
and the night could have swallowed us whole
and i wouldn't have noticed
why didn't you?
my throat was preoccupied by your space
hands waiting like ships in the harbor
i'll be ****** if you didn't hear my wanting
reverberating around my ribcage
i could've eaten you alive in that moment
then
but today
i stare into the eclipse
let it blind me
hadley Jun 2017
and do not tell me this is not love.
do not tell me that watching his sillhouette fade
into yesterday's sun and tomorrow's rain
is any less than a serenade
sublime in its intent.
do not tell me that love must be
late nights/entwined limbs/shut the blinds until rays of light rejoice over the entanglement of warm in living in a sacred room.

my love is radiant
it is my eyes on his with not a touch or a whisper of softness
it is the quiet dedication of unrequited
the softness of what i know his hands would feel like if only i could
reach out.
hadley May 2017
He leaned in, as if to say
All is sacred when pressed under the heat of my body
As if to say
That every moment you spent revolving in the atmosphere
Between your lips and his teeth and his tongue and your wasted words
Was the precipice
Of something new and beautiful
And he could only be described as the most freshly written check
A contract signed along the dotted line
His voice was an appeal to everything unholy
That lay beneath
You, hiding under bone and marrow and skin and darting eyes

but most days
he leans in
as
a memory
of touch and tease and
laughter tossed like quarters into a fountain
May 2017 · 562
night/truth
hadley May 2017
it's in the moments between dusk and dawn that you realize
you love him
twilight dissipates, and the silence becomes just another safety blanket to get you
through the day
it's as if your truth was perishable
like another cheaply bought fruit from the corner store you frequented as a child
but as the night grew more embracing
you found yourself renewed again
excited by the revelations
as if God himself would be envious
of the clarity with which your pillow spoke of
truth
Oct 2016 · 734
sandstorm
hadley Oct 2016
the day you stopped feeling like yourself
transparent window panes became frosted
with the cool heat of his disinterest
the kaleidescope of your mind began to retrace itself
praying to find a moment where you could
still trick yourself into thinking
that this was something
real
and i am left here turning and screaming
and praying for a day where i can feel warmth
that doesn't come from five minutes in his presence
i dig my nails into my skin because the sharpness of the pain distracts from the sandstorms in my heart
dry and hot and nothing left to give
i look to the stars and try to pray for a future
where i'm not still thinking about the look on his face
when he turned away
and the softness of his voice when it speaks my name
Sep 2016 · 709
ode to boy
hadley Sep 2016
i retrograde my thoughts of you
until they are blurred into
an untold prayer
in which your eyes
seek mine
for once
and i feel an acute pain
every time
your smile enters my vicinity
something so disarming
about your everything
i pray and i pray and i pray
but every glance feels like sharp edges and champagne
dizzying and sweet yet a reminder of the hurt you cause me
by never knowing how much it hurts
but just one more smile now
it'll get me through the day
one more touch
feed the daydreams and be my kryptonite
one more moment
in which my heart is perfectly broken
and you will never know
i want to be with him so badly
Sep 2016 · 664
e.
hadley Sep 2016
e.
the feeling of you
is so visceral
my hand
your waist
platonic.
i try to distract with metaphor
words of water and fire
how your eyes remind me of
stepping stones
your smirk
a graduated *****
an equation to solve
try to distract
with anything other than
how your arms never seem to linger
like my own
Sep 2016 · 390
8.29
hadley Sep 2016
bottle me up or swallow me whole
i'll take what i can get
absolute destruction by your hand
could only feel as sweet
as the moment my eyes meet yours
put your lips on mine
don't stop until the night is fleeting into sparks of daylight
and us
awoken from this daydream
and i
never want to question
that for one ethereal moment

you were mine.
Jul 2016 · 542
misc.
hadley Jul 2016
fantasize about the veins in your wrist popping
like his eyes did when you said the words
"i love you."

grow uncomfortable with the lasting silence
within yourself
an itch that you can't scratch.
a self that you can't love.

know that though it may be temporary
you feel like glass has settled in your lungs
a metallic edge to the blood in your heart.
i'm in love and it hurts like hell
hadley Jul 2016
i feel my sadness manifest                  
i tear apart my hopeless heart            
for a shred of what was once            
whole.
i want you to obliterate me                                                            
take my very skin and bone                                                    
want the heat of your breath                                            
to heal all of the wounds my love has left me              

fill up the dark caverns of my lonely        
with your condescension and beautiful eyes      
thinking of you      
feels like shards of glass      
feels like the erosion of something holy      
feels like walking the line      
next to something extraordinarily beautiful    
you are
something
extraordinarily beautiful.
loving you hurts so bad.
Jul 2016 · 793
you.
hadley Jul 2016
softspoken
i feel the simplicity of my attraction
elevate until you are no longer someone
who i can handle being
intangible
i dream of your lips on mine
rays of sun escaping from the corner of
that playful smirk that
haunts my halted concentration.

when i see you with her
feel your hand enclose hers
it feels as if
all of the sun in your eyes had been
overturned
a spilled glass of cough syrup
too sweet to taste on my tongue.

your smile forever on my mind
i shudder at the sound of your name
can't escape the effervescence of everything i'll never have.

i love you.


you will never know.
my heart is broken.
Jun 2016 · 517
relentless
hadley Jun 2016
she passed you in the hallway today
your eyes fixated directly ahead, never hesitating to notice
the shy girl trying so desperately
to keep her focus
on the floor

though of course she felt the presence of your blue eyes
as if their cool indifference could bite with the nod of a head

she was conscious of your feet
striding relentlessly, confidently
never second guessing the gleaming floor beneath them
black converse high tops. ***** laces. the ones you wore most summer days

you were not conscious of her.
you did not notice how her eyes flickered towards your silhouette
for just a second
only a second
you didn't observe her new dress
couldn't have realized that she thought of you when picking her outfit this morning
she thought of you when going to sleep last night
thought of you when she was on the cafeteria line
you never would've thought
that many of her problems arose
merely because she was thinking of you
and your eyes and your cocky smile
your intelligence and your easy conversation

she passed you in the hallway today
but why would you have noticed?
not my usual style at all but i figured i'd try a different type of poetry :)
May 2016 · 720
skin&teeth
hadley May 2016
last night
dreams of neatly packaged anxiety
neatly parceled into my worst fears
planted themselves, grew their roots during my sleep.

i dreamt of irreparable scarring
a face no one could love
the pity of strangers
grief painted across my face in streaks of angry red
dry skin
red like your mother's old tea kettle
crackling like newsprint on a windy day

when you feel as if you are fighting a losing battle
with your own flesh
there is only so much war to be waged
face defeat.
skin will never be her flawless porcelain
will burn as deeply as your shame.
your teeth slightly crooked
sugarfree gum packed into a hesitant casing
leaning as if trying to escape the only mouth they will ever know

in an age of daylily smiles
women sculpted by their own reassurance
will you ever see my smile beyond all that i am not?
~this was a bit on the more personal side for me, i may delete this later~
May 2016 · 700
drowning
hadley May 2016
lackluster, with a sad smile
i wade into the deep ocean of self hatred
with my head anchored to my spine
in only the most casual of ways
lips curved into a hint of what could've been
a smile

as the water reaches my throat
i swear i could hear the click of her patent stilletos
against the sides of my ribs
as i try and recall
the way your calloused hands
brushed against my shoulder
released all of the world's winds
into the small of my back

i can't help but laugh
at the way mirrors seem to destroy me from the inside out
my brown eyes seem to condescend
at what i fail become
as i watch you fall in love
with all that she is
and all that i can never be

i drown.
i may delete this later
May 2016 · 985
pretty girls.
hadley May 2016
i watch her lips move as she speaks
the symmetry of her face
stained glass eyes with cheeks of rose
a complexion as flawless as a fresh spring day
my heart is broken with every word she speaks.
for i feel my imperfections resounding more clearly in her beautiful frame
than i ever could in a mirror.
legs longer than any lie of self-love that i could ever spin
her waist narrow, molded into galaxies that boys will dream of grasping.


if she is spring, than i am the middle of february.
my skin is clear the way that the sky is green
my figure an ominous cloud of a long winter
lackluster, abrasive
daring those who look upon it to find themselves immediately disinterested

for i hold no fear for the oblivion of darkness
would march into the depths of the sea without glancing back
pretty girls are my sole fear
for i know that by the end of the day
you will look to her and, much like myself, not find a single flaw in her effortless effervescence,
and i will go by without so much as a passing glance.
wOW this is angsty and self-pitying, i apologize
hadley May 2016
1.) Start with the base of your ribs
feel the panic spread, eating away at all that you have built
tumbling over the rocky shores of your throat
feel the magma of self-hatred spread to your neck- fluid, disproportionate.
Feel it wash over the ground that you walk on, feel yourself
bite your lip
sharp pain
it's what you need to distract from the skeletons dancing in your closet.

2.) Watch him, and ignore the fact that he has never seen you as more than a transparent windowpane
Never noticed the landscapes within the confines of your rounded frame.
See his gaze follow her, and tell yourself
that your hopeful shadow will never be traced by his sparkling eyes
that he will never look to bask within your uncertain figure
will never see the soft glint of passion that fervently glows at the core of your spine.

3.) Dig your nails into your flesh and swallow back the tears. You didn't earn them.
Feel your skin grow red and angry
Feel yourself grow red and angry
Know that you are nothing, are nothing. Deserve to feel nothing.
To fall into infatuation with no sleight of hand
To have the floor drop below you at the sight of his face.
Not even a conversation, never even a conversation.
You are an amateur, playing a game that you never qualified to enter.

And he? He is the unassuming sun, stopping only to reach his illumination down into the cavity of your lightless eyes. Once, maybe twice. Maybe not.
He is the perpendicular street
Unexplored and full of complete and utter wonder
He is the manifestation of all that I wish him to be.
He will never be what I wish him to be.

4.) Go home. Write a poem. Go to sleep. Listen to music. Anything to stop the racing of the glow of your heart. Dream of a future. Without him, without this.
Keep Dreaming.
writing this was really cathartic to me, i hope you enjoy :)
May 2016 · 1.3k
for him~
hadley May 2016
missed opportunities
spill from my lips
like forgotten tea roses on a lone winter's day
as i watch you leave without so much as glancing back
i remember that this neglect is brought upon by no one but myself
i dream of love like it's the last remaining shred of worth that i could ever gain
yet i wither away from your foreign gaze as if you could destroy me with just a glance
my open palms can not trace their way North
so they merely end up planted in my pockets with a downtrodden gaze
the unassuming warmth of your eyes, burns
as i avoid you as if one look towards your slender shadow
would render me irreparably broken
~ i hope this makes sense i just feel very weird and emotional and im trying to translate~
May 2016 · 461
look to the heavens
hadley May 2016
future is waning
slowly receding
depths of my mind try to conquer an untouchable future
something so vaguely assinine about dreaming of success
scatter the puzzle pieces of my diminishing heart
pray that they will find their way back together
i cannot even grasp what lies at my feet
how can i look to the heavens and try and fall in love with a reality that ceases to exist with my ever continuing heartbeat?
hadley May 2016
what it must be like to be one of those girls!
teasing smile, heart of bubblegum and cigarettes
you chase her, yet you have no desire to understand her
no yearning to hear her thoughts on a dark and sleepless night

i want to exchange dreams with you
want to find myself breathless in the depths
of your mind's many oceans
want to feel your arms around me
encircling my waist
that will never be as narrow as hers
a figure of skin and bone that will never measure up

you don't care for substance
you drink from shallow ponds and let their coolness dissolve in the heat of your disinterest
you like how they sparkle in the light
the way my raging ocean never will
and yet i leave myself at your doorstep
knowing you'll never find yourself
looking down
Apr 2016 · 953
replay
hadley Apr 2016
everything about you
confuses my very circuitry
i cannot separate you from the ghost of my own self-hatred
one touch
a tease
a glance
nothing more to you, but every second after you walk away is spent
replaying replaying replaying replaying

sunday mornings come easily, but weekends slip away
like raindrops on a tin roof
monday comes
you and your eyes and your smile
may come, may not
depending on your boredom or need for validation

my circuits continue to replay replay replay
lighting up at the notion of you stopping by
i am wired and assembled for your very presence
the voltage crackles from my skin and i can no longer live in denial
i power off and resume my week, back into my nocturnal crevice
of life without you
life without a hint of your smile
life with a broken circuit, begging to stay

alive
~not my best, i just had to get him off my mind~
Apr 2016 · 1.1k
sweet inversion
hadley Apr 2016
long days end soft
i quietly fold your smirks and raunchy laughter
into a neat pile
slid under the doorframe
legs crossed in a warm room
is it denial or just a sense of security?
i listen to the cars pass
and for once
i try not to think about whether you also
sit quietly in your blanket of personality
i cannot prevent the lingering hope
that you are my sweet inversion
oppositely compatible
puzzle pieces, torn apart

yet i sit here, perhaps my own inversion
enough to complete all of the equations necessary
with nothing but my own racing mind
and beating heart
so i decide not to think of you
and enjoy a moment of pause
in the soft glow of what isn't immediately apparent
Apr 2016 · 553
tar and lavendar
hadley Apr 2016
fingertips to wrist
i resist the urge reach out
he's an arm's length away
but completely unreachable
everything about you is so ******* inaccessible
i wish that i could find the words
my insides are tar and lavender
sweet enough, but so tenaciously anchored
that i couldn't bear a "hello"
for fear of losing the ground altogether
Apr 2016 · 948
Retrograde
hadley Apr 2016
my future feels like
mascara
dripping down my panicked face
quietly imminent
i never forgot the way he laughed at me
that day
7 months ago
and though my switchblade heart
moves forward into what will be
i feel myself retrograde into his closed arms
and although good days seem bright and scintillescent
and the space feels infinite, full of hope
i still feel myself retrograde into who i once was
because doubt is not a skin that is easily shed
i retrograde
because moving forward feels like
constriction
feels like
stepping into an icebox on a winter day
i retrograde because
my mind is so broken that backwards is the only way to
move
on.
Apr 2016 · 1.2k
champagne smiles
hadley Apr 2016
as i sit and wonder what could possibly be done
i arrive at a realization that my heart is that of a roaring tide
deeper than you deserve to have
but asking for nothing more than the sunshine
that rolls off in drops from your tongue

there is nothing i want more than your crystalline warmth beside me while i cry
and when i laugh i yearn for my sound to echo in the caverns of your mind
yet i can do nothing but watch you watch me
as my heart's decrepit hope
sinks further into the cavity of my chest
and i feel the resounding pain that is the absence of your love on a rainy day

the torture of her beauty can never truly leave my lips
but every one of her smiles causes me pain that you will never know
if i were to try, would it matter?
would i merely become an afterthought? a party joke?
a half-drunk pun told through champagne smiles and friendly glances
could i ever be more to you than what i am now?
a gloriously insignificant extra in your otherwise fulfilled life
so i continue to shake like the tide
without you
~i have a lot of feelings today~
Apr 2016 · 1.1k
blaring technicolor
hadley Apr 2016
just a glance sets my mind into retrograde
no one ever questions the orchestration of an undeclared love
cover your tracks, maintain composure
plan scenarios in your head until you feel like a broken record over and over again
i like you i like you i like you i like you
but then?
                             reality.
I see you in blaring technicolor
and it's more than i asked for
for there is nothing worse
than truly seeing you as you really are
hadley Mar 2016
a brief passing glance
i ignore my pounding heart
since he would as well.

but his eyes twinkle
and he will not ever know
how i long for him

though i've given it
more than a passing thought, i
know- he loves me not.
Mar 2016 · 752
anxiety
hadley Mar 2016
an effervescent vortex
brief suspension before descending into an electric current
no balance
no breath
a shadow caressing your silhouette
a brief stutter
why am i here
no worth no worth no worth
tears drip
bitter
like his old cologne and year old rejection
you wear it like a new raincoat
but the electricity is still pulsing
moving moving moving
no worth
a great earthquake
shaking
suddenly aware of the emptiness
you turn and face them
concern etched into faces like a magazine
glossy
edited
trying to ignore the monster in your stomach
you open your mouth
you hope it will settle soon, but you know it can't
it's out for blood.

"i'm fine."
today was really rough ~ this is not as edited as my usual pieces, as i wrote this more as a stream of consciousness to get out some stuff.
Jan 2016 · 529
breath
hadley Jan 2016
his sweet breath
a siren song
what can I say?
see, I breath only in prose
so broken that it takes transcription
just to utter a word
when the floodgates of my mind are open
my tongue knows no boundaries
the flower of my words
sweet on my lips
candied roses
I sigh in sonnets
only later to realize that
the song had been rewritten

as
                the
words          
          tumbled
out                

the candy are now cough drops
a hint of what they appear to be

      
his breath is a siren song
and mine is a stanza so delicate
that it doesn't know where to start
or


stop.
Jan 2016 · 783
Kaleidoscope Love
hadley Jan 2016
i daydream about your lips on mine
our kaleidoscope love
colorful fragments only visible
by me
an unreachable reality
for my lips have never felt the touch of another
and your eyes know not of mine
only of hers
Jan 2016 · 1.5k
the ocean
hadley Jan 2016
his eyes
will never see
my eyes
watching them
curtains of classroom lights
will paint a portrait
of a prettier girl
for his eyes
to watch
instead of me
my eyes
a barren desert
his eyes
the ocean
Jan 2016 · 688
Melatonin Clouds
hadley Jan 2016
and into her I would channel the seas
let them erode at the darkness
file away the rough edges
fill her up so that she felt whole again
onto her
tattoo a thousand words convincing her of her own worth
etch them into her skin before she could wash them away
let them bleed through the empty pores
and sprinkle into her eyes
paint a world
a blank canvas
hand her a paintbrush
I'd remind her that she is more than he could ever build her up to be
that she was seeing the world through a lens distorted with Melatonin clouds and painkiller ocean
hadley Jan 2016
when I begged her not to take the pills
she said "okay"
we tried to continue our meaningless dialogue
tried to play our cards casual
tried not to play at all
tried to pretend that the elephant in the room
wasn't slowly morphing into a
set of sharp teeth
a great white shark
our elephant in the room was less an elephant and more a T. rex
biting and destructive
instinctual
inevitable
ours was a story of passivity
bitter laughs
tasted of sour patch
without the sweet release
and before long, it was gone
words exchanged like candy
melted away too soon
never enough, always wanting more
Jan 2016 · 609
Porcelain
hadley Jan 2016
Silly girl
You thought this time it would be different
that an apology would roll off her tongue like drops of honey
smoothing over the bitter grooves of underhanded insults
you thought that she could recollect your virginal heart
when smiles appeared as easily as the love interest in a rom com
days of honeydew laughter and cotton candy clouds
thought she could sit next to you gently
watch the wind roll by in tendrils of nostalgia
rather than throw herself into the dark mess of woods that are your thoughts on a sunny day
instead of desperately planting trees to block the sun as you stood quietly chopping them down in hopes of one day catching a rare glimpse of the light
oh honey
don’t you see that pride is a stepstool?
Low enough that you can still see part of her but high enough that she has completely lost sight
don’t you see that her head is in a cupboard of dishes that were organized by her
the dim echo of your calls bounce off the porcelain and land in her mouth
she spits them out
you leave the room
ignorant little girl
problematic little girl
you tell yourself that she will get better that you will get better that one day
waking up in the morning won’t feel like a broken elevator
stranded between floors
you could press the right buttons
but it wouldn’t matter anyway
you’re already in the wrong place
you wonder if when strangers say that you remind them of her
if they knew how her voice could turn from bandages to blades all in the matter of seconds
how her presence could make you shrink
turn you into a different girl
one with sandpaper voice and jackhammer rage
you wonder how others are supposed to love you
how you are supposed to love you
when everyday feels like peeling up floorboards
feels like wrapping myself in cellophane
feels like never truly knowing what life could be
there will be a day
when she calls you abusive
oh you naive little girl
don’t let the woman whose lips blossom with your insecurities allow you to tell you
that the sky isn’t blue
for it takes a sinking ship
to make cries of distress so buoyant
that they hit the surface as missiles.

— The End —