Holly Salvatore

Holly Salvatore Jul 2014

Oceans, mountains, stars, crickets,
storms, the moon, sunburns,
so you would feel my love

Rocks, trees, an east wind,
honey bees, skin,
so you would feel my love

All you have is fear, and I am sorry for you
All I have are empty hands,
and when I try to lay still,
I find I can't stop vibrating

*We are what we have always been

Holly Salvatore Jul 2014

Talking to My Dog About Death

She has the softest paws, like a leopard.

Bodies of ash, bodies of carbon, bodies like hills of coal.

She has the softest paws, the softest eyes.

His brain full of holes and cold and gray. His brain full of holes, like the sky before rain.

She has the softest eyes, like a mother.

You felt dying like living, and you didn't know words for it. Felt dying like winter.

She has the softest eyes, the color of my father's. Caramel.

Ghosts made of strong wills. Ghosts made of leftovers. Ghosts unwilling to leave, confused without their bodies. Only collections of memories, and walking through things they shouldn't be.

She has the softest eyes, even closed. She has the softest paws, running while she sleeps.

Blood and rhythm. Hearts and bones. Humans are things with opaque meanings. Humans are things afraid of losing beats.

She has the softest paws.
For holding.

Holly Salvatore Jul 2014

Tame

Let us both pretend we can tame each other.
Let us both pretend we're not mountains,
but people who fit quietly inside houses
Let us both pretend that our water runs
slow and thick like blood, instead of
unchecked and tenebrous as oceans
Let us both pretend we take tea like humans
in the afternoons
we are not deer, and we are not running,
we are not hawks, and we've never felt
the squirm of rodents in our claws
we've never felt the lift of a sudden wind

Let us both pretend we can tame each other
with nothing more than our will
That we're not lightning, or tall trees,
or echoes in canyons
older than time
*We are storms and we are breaking
somewhere over to the West

Holly Salvatore Jul 2014

Love poem #2

Your laugh is a gunshot
My head is on your chest
I am listening to your lungs rumble
And telling you
You will never grow old
Your laugh is a blue light
Dancing around the room
It is becoming something else
Your laugh is alive now
It is breathing and it is a fox
And it is a gunshot
In my body
Where the bones should be
There is warm honey
Running and I am numb
And I am soft and I am lost
I am a fox
Your laugh is a gunshot
Heard closer to the Tennessee line
I am telling you we are growing younger and younger
My head is on your chest
I am listening to your lungs rumble
Like mountains made of coal

Holly Salvatore Jul 2014

Love poem #1

His laugh rolling
The stars above
The river below
His laugh rolling
And now my skin is
So many weightless night-colored birds

Holly Salvatore Jun 2014

It's Tuesday and I don't have to work

I'm not as good at life as my mom said I would be. She said "Holly, one day you'll go scuba diving and you can tell me all about it." But I got stung by a sea urchin. Not even diving, just walking on the beach, toes wet. And now the aloe plant on my windowsill is leering at me. I'm never outside long enough to get a sunburn. Although admittedly, burning me takes more sunlight than the day ever actually has. I'm never outside long enough to feel like a deer anymore. The skull on the counter, still bubble-wrapped from flight, is sightless and maybe waiting to be painted. And I think when it is nailed up I will feel like a deer again, remembering about the antlers and the fear of guns, without even knowing what to call them.

Holly Salvatore Jun 2014

Colorblind

I pray to the sun god a lot. For warm skin and fresh basil.
You pray to the stars. You pray for the sky like a yawning mouth. You pray for my father. For my sister and the parts of her she keeps hidden. You pray for people who are terrible at hiding, too, who leave themselves open, ripe as peaches. You pray for fall this year, for the harvest, that it will be consummate and yield bushels and bushels.
You pray that you won't forget anything important: keys; your mother's birthday; how to just keep breathing even though you're convinced your heart is shrinking. And you pray that you will live your life loosely, forever outside. You pray for that tightness in your chest to go away and stop bothering you at night, and for a scythe like they used to use for farming.
You pray that God is real. The Sunday school God who loves you and killed off his protagonist so that you might live like a soldier, unsure of what you're fighting for, but fighting nonetheless.
You pray that God is real but you have serious doubts about any creator who allows colorblindness and then makes the world and the sky and girl you love look like this.