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Maggie Bartolome Feb 2015
For Dylan:
I use to love things when I was little walking to school all the time. I remember how good everyone was and how pure the world could be. I know that I'm different now. But I can tell you that I love you more than watching the sunshine peek out of the mountains every morning.
I love you more than garden gnomes and pink flamingos painting dew drops on people's grass before we go outside and it's early.
I love you more than the smell of freshly mowed lawn on a warm summer dawn. Radiating that green color.
I love you much more than  the people who meaninglessly love their spoiled children with puffy pudding faces. Their never ending adoring smiles cast down at the kids who've learned to hold other kids.
I can't stop thinking about how we are going to love these things when we begin waking up too early and can't fall asleep, sitting on the front porch, watching our old friend sun rise and fall each day.
I can't wait to find the time passing effortlessly in front of us in crummy walks where the golden face stares at us and the slate city we might never leave.
I'm still a child and so are you.
We are gonna have so much fun.
Maggie Bartolome Jul 2014
We share a room. The light from her iPod stopped bugging me after a while.
We took out the bunk bed after we decided to be grown ups.
On a double matteress we gather hours of rest,
Our bodies barely touch or coil together
Just the breathing sounds we make in our sleep states are comforting enough.
When we hear a bump, we consult each other of whether we should leave the room or just go back to bed.
She started asking me to cover for her.
So mom wouldn't know what she was up to.
Mom trusts us as we would hope. And we hardly break that trust.
Life stopped being complicated for me.
It's like it began anew,  
Unfolding
Straightening paths
Smoothing the crinkles in each sheet that layover my little body
The bends disappeared, crusted confrontations
Forgotten.
I met him from a great friend of mine. We argued over something silly.
He called me after I explained I was upset.
I beat myself over the dry branches of thick trees
Scolding myself. Insulting myself.
I did nothing but remind myself of my exclusive habits to handsome men.
But he visited me and upon that spree of him skipping class, he was beautiful like the men. So I thought maybe, in the back of my mind, that I could explore him like the others and relieve him and myself of whatever we were clinging to.
He was clinging to something short of sadness. Much like grief.
And he explained that I was good and shouldn't place myself in a damp hole when the sun is capable of more than being bright and warm.
So we spoke and lay together in my bed resisting silly things.
Sitting up together he is ready to leave he says 'I'm glad I skipped class today.'
He kisses me. Telling me that he isnt interested in much else.

My mouth is filled with sweet smells, bitter tastes. This boys limbs quake, heart punching rib bones as fast as man boy can take, his glasses tremble to his skin too. Everything sticks slowly. I can see the ceiling moving. The shadows against its popcorn texture. I can hear my mother clicking her mouse by the computer. He breathes in, pupils enlarge almost as loud as an animals shriek.

I think I twitched.
My sister forgot to make the bed that day.
And I'm glad becaus he doesn't make his bed either.
Maggie Bartolome Jan 2014
How to rise to the occasion:

I have broken everything. 
All of the garbage on the foggy cracked streets. Midnight starts humming softly 
at first
 winding over the streetlights
 shimmering
 off of the metallic wrappers from 7/11
My adaptability to your absence is a clear
 alarm buzzer by now. 
'because he was there and I was not.'
Bananafish swim in the thick of the foggy fissures
Of my new secret. 
The fat boy in the drivers seat
Compliments me
"thank you."i say and
One bananafish swims faster than the others 
Breaking throughout the tears
Passes the windows and rips the dashboard. 
I swallow the bananafish whole 
And after fat boys hands are firm and
Infatuated on my cheeks
Bananafish swims in my head violently 
He is so large that he wags his tail in my stomach
Scratching at the walls of my belly
Poking his head out of my throat. 
"I'm here. Let me out. Let me out."
And I hear your voice ask me if this is okay. 
And I imagine all of your long fingers 
Gingerly touching my cheeks. 
I think of your breath asking me if this is okay. 
The sax playing fat boy
 makes me open my eyes again
When we pull away. 
And that's when I know I've killed my bananafish.
Maggie Bartolome Dec 2013
**** I hope it stays.
The snow outside looks like the white noise I hear in my dreams.
It's like holy whispers too powerful.
Thousands of tiny frozen pieces of wind and water that stick to the sidewalk.
It's been seven years since it stayed this long.
Little eight year old Alex says, "It's supposed to storm."
Maggie Bartolome Nov 2013
Oily fingers the she-beast moans. 
She wanted those Saturday nights
Watching old reruns of cow and chicken. 
She never got there.
She only sank deeper into
Her petals. 
The Past
1) is of conquest
Experiences well made
She
Still hasn't kissed a boy
But she also 
Hasnt felt herself. 
2) it quenched you to know
How much
We can **** up in one 
Moment in time. 
3) her first favorite band
Was on a twilight soundtrack
4) ready to present herself
To the first naked man
She had seen
In a long time
She opens her robe
And uncovers all of her lies.

TOMORROW
She will wake up in love 
The first time. 
The past is a liar 
The past is
A secret
Fear. 
   The future is an unbearable truth. 
Not the eyes of mothers,
Steady hands of fathers
Nor the she-beast
Can complete the feat. 
Mass suicide sways oceans 
Beside the globe. 
The inevitable 
Shakes it's ******* on
National television
Through
Nuclear war and bitter missionary men. 
The future is losing circulation 
As the she-beast welcomes a man
Into her home
The future is like her
Well labeled. 
The future is a *****. 
Saturday nights blot at her itchy flesh. 
She is finally ready to get up.
Maggie Bartolome Nov 2013
Brilliant hues of pink shades.
They pass my face and make me whimper.
I whisper as equal halves of the both of us.
Between many winding fruit you
Cake yourself in sugars and oily juices.
Private parts all waxy and gelled up.
Slick
Skin meets skin.
We say hello a number of times.
You have prickly hairs.
We rise and fall in the moonlight.
Parents haven't come home yet.
It'll be days before we speak again.
Maggie Bartolome Nov 2013
Sun soaking through bitter
Winter winds
The air begins creeping around
The lotion I applied this morning.
My legs have been bare for a while.
And the water cuts clean through me.
Icy knives less than dropped.
River cold begins to feel new and dry.
All of it blew passed me
You and your skin.
What I imagine it to be
It could purify
Every bit of me
I think I'm lost
Kiss me,
Withtheworstbuzz. Withthebestlips,
And you will see how important I am.
Sylvia Plath, hidden quote, high, love, winter, important
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