Lucy Michelle

Lucy Michelle Feb 2016

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how certain things make me think of you
And no one else, and without reason,
I guess just some letters of the alphabet belong to your memory
And then you fill up the smoky corners of my mind and I start wondering
How can I get on a plane and get up to you
I want you and me and the long-haired boy who lived across the hall from us
To walk somewhere dark and look at the city lights
To talk about love and punk music and poetry and missing people who become part of you
You both know a lot about those things and I know so little
I think I need to be close to your flesh to soak up your greatness.

I’ve been thinking so much lately that it worries me
That you’re busy now with the end of an era, and other such things
And you’ll eventually stop thinking about me
I imagine somehow that I’ll feel it; that I’ll turn my head to the wind dramatically
And know deep in my bones that I fell out of your mind for the last time.

I haven’t been able to breathe for two months.
No one can touch me.
I know you know what it feels like.
Every time I’m in a crowd I start to panic
Every time I’m asleep my dreams start to strangle me
I wake up in tears and sometimes people hold me
But mostly I wonder if I am a burden. I wonder if I can be heard.
I cannot write poetry about my anxiety
Because I am afraid of the word
But I know you know what it feels like.

At any rate, I meant to tell you
In some way or another, eventually or not at all
That I read your poetry all the time.
That I tell pretty boys that I know, personally, the greatest poet and artist of all time and we shared a dorm room in a pretty city with pretty lights and she used to hand me my bottle of pain pills early in the morning.
I don’t mean to be strange
And I’m surrounded by so much love here I never seem to have a moment free
And there are so many people, I’m never alone
Every day there are concerts! and kissing! and bookstores! are you proud?
And I’m sure you haven’t got a spare minute to miss me
But if I ever cross your mind, if David Bowie and black jeans remind you of something
Let me know and I’ll crawl up to your skyline
And I’ll listen to your poetry and collect your tears
Because life always has a way of grinding to a stop for me
And when it does,
I always think
of you.

Lucy Michelle Nov 2015

_

i think i am ready to give up
i think i will start taking ******
i think i might take up smoking
maybe then i will feel better
perhaps then i will sleep
i’m so tired
i’m so hungry
perhaps i won’t have to eat.

Lucy Michelle Nov 2015

...

its like every time i change the world
the next morning i forget how i did it
even if i don't want to change the world
the next morning i'd forget that i didn't

Lucy Michelle Nov 2015

.

What's your favorite emotion, he asks me
Because he likes to ask silly questions like that
Ones that always catch me by surprise
Ones I'm still learning how to answer.

Fear I said
My favorite is fear
Why would you want to be scared?
Everyone wants to be brave

But fear is the most beautiful feeling I know
It is delicate and loud
It fills you up to your ears

If I love you I want you to scare me
I want to shake in your arms
I want to be filled with fear
Because fear is beautiful

Fear shows weakness
Weakness breeds strength
Fear means you are doing difficult things, new things
Something most people would not
Because they fear like you
But unlike you they let it scare them
You let fear fill you up with love
Because you think fear is beautiful.

Lucy Michelle Nov 2015

The End Of September

When my mother dropped me off at the airport
She said, I hope that you find your home
This one is tired and bent at the edges
And it doesn't suit you well
I walked and flew and slept all across the universe
But then I remembered... I know where my home is
My home is walked into the paint-stained carpets of dorm hallways where we taught international students how to curse in English
My home is under the napkins in greasy spoon diner tables where my godfather winked across at me
It's somewhere between the white and the blue in the waves of the ocean
Inside one or both of my headphone earbuds
Under the bark of a eucalyptus tree
Inside the box of waxy crayons on my lap during road trips
Caught like a stone in the treads of the tire of the wood-sided Jeep my father gave me
Buried under a tree in the backyard, with the goldfish and the pet mice
In between the keys of my piano and the keys to my first dorm, first house
In the sunlight through the window panes of my room in San Fransisco
And hanging off the roof with the geckos in Indonesia
It's feeling scared in the school library and at senior prom and in empty alleyways
It's the empty park nine thousand miles away from my mother
Where I whispered to the birds that I wanted to go home
Because I knew no one else would listen.
It's in the scissors that gave me blisters
When I redecorated our house by hand
And the tears I hid from my brother
While I turned up the thermostat to warm his icy soul.
A lot of it is stuck on the roof of a hospital room
Staring up wishing to disappear
Some of it is in my father's bones
And his misty eyes when they started to show
Home is in my best friend's bed
We didn't have our health but at least we had each other
It's my favorite space between the top bunk and the bottom bunk
Where secrets hang like candle smoke
It's the words of a book I haven't written
And the pages of one I don't want read
It's here, it's now, it's etched on my skin
It's me, it's him, it's somewhere far ahead
I don't know what it looks like but I know it will be there.

Lucy Michelle Nov 2015

see, the problem is

people presume that writing prolifically
means i want to be read prolifically
when in reality it's just that i used to write things in notepads
and then i started writing them in books
and soon i'll start painting them on windows
and then i'll be carving them into walls
because if i don't get them out of my head
they'll choke me
they'll pull at my wrists
i get scared when people see these words
but if i kept them to myself i'd forget how to be nice.

Lucy Michelle Nov 2015

i'd hate to be responsible

i took a bus to the bookstore
looking for a book that used to mean a lot to me
even though i’d forgotten what it was about
i found it and it cost me twenty dollars, which is a lot for a story
but i’d to be responsible
for the death of the publishing industry.

i bought a coffee that tasted like a shot in the face;
just the way i like it.
a group of drunk guys with hoodies at the bus stop
shouted at me and tried to make me go home with them
i glared at them and turned away
i wished my hair was shorter
but i was glad i’d put on a sweater
because i’d hate to be responsible
for being a victim because of what i wore.

they stood behind me staring for awhile, it shook me to my core
they got into a fistfight with another girl instead of touching me
which is good because i’m sick of hand in places they don’t belong
she fought them off and someone called the police; all i could think was it could have been me
and i’d hate to be responsible
for the arrest of a gang of perverts.

i still flinched at every sudden movement
for the rest of the night
and i still cried on the walk home
i made a joke with myself that it was just because it had stopped raining
and i’d hate to be responsible
for letting the world go dry.

my uncle told me the boys at the bus stop
did what they did because of the color of their skin
i wished for a moment he knew how it felt
to be so scared i thought i’d be sick
i wanted to tell him he should have told me he was glad i was okay
instead of saying racist things and laughing as he did
but i’d hate to be responsible
for teaching a man how not to be ignorant.