Mikaila

Mikaila Oct 2018

Untitled

Someday when I am old and weathered
I will look back on this day
And feel alive again.
Across the years
I’ll slip like sand
And I’ll be there in the shocking cold water
Sun slanting through a hazy sky
Watching the light touch your bare shoulders.
I discover a new kind of beauty whenever I look at you
Something harsh and soft at the same time
Like the ocean is.
I followed you in
Entranced as always
And the cold stealing the sensation from me
Did not dim the strange pull I feel from you.
It was confusing
Floating in that sea of icy water
Seeing my feelings made real
Pushing and tugging at me
Something vast and lovely and
Inescapable.
Something that could stop my heart.
Even there I felt it more than I felt the tide
More than I felt the cold,
More than everything: it swallows all light and all thought.
A modest part of me told me to look away,
Although I watched with innocence,
As the water sank from your collarbones and rose again,
But I couldn’t
So I just kept my distance.
You belonged there,
Something wild and powerful and changeable,
Something hypnotic,
A force of nature.
And it was beautiful, to me,
It was right-
I couldn’t turn from it.
It’s little things you don’t notice
Or maybe you do, and you never say.
Lying in the sand,
I watched the shadows deepen at your jaw as the sun dipped lower.
We laughed,
And sometimes you would meet my eyes and I would feel
Cold all over again
Like I was lost at sea
And happy to be there.
What a strange place we’re in.
What a strange place I’m in.
I could look and look at you all day,
I could listen to the cadence of your voice for hours.
It’s a battle
Not to get too caught in your gravity
And just freeze like a photo
Trying to remember you as if when I blink you’ll disappear.
The waves would hit me and push me back a step
And your laughter would float over them and join mine
And beneath it all I still felt that irresistible call, that unstoppable force
The thing that pulls me toward you.
I let it take hold of me,
But not move me.
I let it consume me the way it does
Went still, arms spread, and let the waves hold me up, my smiling eyes always searching for you
And always finding you in the folds of the water.
The way I move around you
The times I choose to keep my distance and the times I let myself be close
The careful way I study your face
Trying to remember it, trying to understand what I feel when I’m near you
The little things I do for you-
It’s all love.
It’s all the love I have just
Pouring out of me into the world,
And no wonder people look at us.
I’m surprised it doesn’t push them all back with its force.
I’m surprised it doesn’t push you back,
But somehow you seem to live well in it
For now.
You seem, even, to let it in.
Sometimes I’m sure you’ve realized,
I joke about it, but I think you already understand-

If you had walked off into the sea,
I’d have followed you like the path the moon leaves on clear nights
I’d have pressed the breath from my lungs
And found the bottom.
I’d have let the cold fill my veins and my bones and my mind
And given myself
Gladly
To a pull stronger than reason
And stronger than fear.

I’d have a sunk my fingers into the icy sand
And followed you all the way to silence.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

- TS Eliot

Mikaila Oct 2018

A Sweet Little Poem

I can’t promise
I’ll ever get used to you.
When I first walk into a room and you’re there
It hits me hard.
I’m always worried other people will notice.
It’s like someone hit pause on my whole being for a second
And then released me and I’m scrambling to catch up.
I recover quickly, but those first few moments...
I blink in confusion, a little dazzled,
As if by sudden daylight.
And honestly I feel silly for it-
You’d think, after everything we’ve shared
I’d have been able to master that by now
But instead
Every time is like that first time.
Every time, I stumble over my words a bit
And find it hard to look you in the eyes.
Every time, I am a little unraveled by you
And I see your confusion sometimes
And your relief when that moment passes and I am your friend again.
I must seem so strange to you.
Sometimes I worry that you think I don’t trust you
Or that I don’t like you
Or that I’m afraid of you.
But really it’s just that
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you
As a person
As a part of my life and my world.
I think maybe I’ll always walk in the room and have to catch my breath
When you’re there
Because you’re there.

I guess I just have to hope
It’s a strangeness you can live with.

Mikaila Oct 2018

a consummation devoutly to be wished

I tried everything
To break my mind like a sheet of glass.
I pounded with my fists.
It held, cold and unyielding,
Mocking
And when I was spent it was exactly as it had been
In tact and undamaged.
Maybe this time will be different.
Maybe this time
When you go
I’ll put my fist through it like a mirror
And it will finally shatter and become a part of me.
I close my eyes, and dream.

I am in a ward, and it is empty and cool.
I run my hands along the hospital beds
Their coarse white linens
I push my fingers through the bars on the windows of the doors
I lay my cheek against the cold metal of a table
I am alone
And I feel nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Echoing and calm.
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
The air is like gel
I have to push through it
And I am slow and empty and content to be so.
The world refracts
And I watch coolly, detached
Shadows move
But they don’t bother me.
They follow me on the wallpaper, waving hands
And I reach for them
Line my fingers up with theirs
Feel the darkness tingle along my skin.
They don’t speak
But someone else does.
It’s a harsh husk of a whisper, like sand
And I let it scrape across the back of my neck and raise the flesh along my arms.
It says,
“I’m sorry”
“I’m sorry”
“I’m sorry”
The sound fills me like a horrible prayer,
And suddenly I feel everything instead of nothing
And I think
This is the moment I die
This is the end of me
But instead it
Continues.
“I’m sorry”
“I’m sorry”
“I’m sorry”

It’s me.

I put a hand to my throat in surprise, feel the vibrations there.
My face is contorted, and for a long moment I feel it, trying to read it,
Trying to understand,
Then pull back sharply, having found what I was looking for
And hating it.
No, no, no-
If I can make the maze of my thoughts hard enough to navigate
Maybe I will never find my way out again
Into sense
And into
Pain.
I sink inside myself,
Sorry sorry sorry
And each word is like a wound torn open by shaking fingers
And I am sure this agony
Will last forever
Squeezing my heart and lungs
Wringing me out.

But suddenly the world shifts,
The sorrow is pulled out of me like venom and I forget it as I forget myself.
Like a child, I am new and blank and whole.
Tears still cling to my eyelashes from the moment before
But now I no longer know why they are there, blurring the edges of world.
I taste one, and it is like the sea
And I realize that I am in the water.

I bathe in front of an audience of silent white faces
They do not bother me
I am splayed, naked, in a warm porcelain tub
And I let my face sink beneath the surface
Looking up into the lights shaking and swirling above me.
They’re like little fish
Out in the air
When I’m in here.
I stare and stare
Until darkness starts to fade them
And hands grab my shoulders.
When I emerge it is like being born and dying all at once
And something like coherence gnaws at the edges of me
I shrink from it, rubbing my hands together, frantic.
Sorrysorrysorry
A whisper that makes me turn my head sharply
But then it’s gone.

Someone pulls me from the water and dries me.

Like a doll I am moved away from that place
And I forget it as soon as the door closes.
A storm threatens though, on the horizon something menacing and tumultuous looms.
A thought I don’t want to have,
A feeling I can’t name and don’t ever want to.
It claws at me, it chews at my ragged fingernails until blood blossoms and drips onto the bedspread.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”
It’s not my mind that’s fraying, it’s my soul,
And I know which one I’d rather lose.
I curl into a ball, huddled and waiting
To be crushed.
But at the last second, no-
A sharp slice, something shiny and bright.
I feel ice in my veins, and then numbness.
Oh,
I want to be wrapped in white sheets
And dine on bread and water
The purest nun
The **** Madonna
Shrouded for the shadows to mourn.
I stare around me with large liquid eyes, searching for someone whose name I can’t remember.
I have to say something,
I have to tell her...

But I am alone here,
Thank god.
I am alone and it is loud with stillness
And I am forgetting my name as I forgot hers.
I toss it away from me, the last of something
Sacred
That won’t be missed.
I drift, hoping for rest
And I start to find it.

Something metallic and heavy is seeping through me
And I let the last of that clawing feeling slip away.
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
I feel it. It’s back. I hope it stays forever:
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing

I weep, and the tears are empty.
And I am empty
And I feel
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing

Thank god.

Mikaila Oct 2018

Untitled

There’s no art in the world that could live up to this feeling-
I can’t make anything like this.
Not with my soul as collateral
Could I bargain my way to something beautiful enough
To explain what I mean
Tonight.
You must be right, then.
You must be right.
There mustn’t be a god
There mustn’t be a plan:

I can’t imagine meeting the god
Who could have dreamed you up.

Mikaila Sep 2018

I Rush Into The Secret House

I would break a thousand mirrors
To draw the dark away from you
Break them with my palms
And grind them to glittering dust between my fingers.
I welcome the shadows with the sacredness of ****** hands.

Let them come.
I am not afraid.
I am ready
For war.

Title is a reference to Antony and Cleopatra, Act 4 Scene 15

Mikaila Sep 2018

Easy

It’s just easy for them
Isn’t it?
This couple on the train.
They walked on laughing together
Holding hands
And I felt that familiar something-
Not jealousy
Not envy
But...
Chagrin.
Astonishment.
Incredulity.
Incomprehension.
Looking at them feels like looking at one of those
Impossible pictures
Where the stairs keep going forever in a loop.
It’s just
Easy for them.

It doesn’t hurt anymore, that thought,
But thinking it feels so odd in my mind
When I can’t imagine loving someone without
Shame,
Without pain.
They fit.
These people,
They fit without having to carve anything out.
They fit without punishing each other.
They fit like puzzle pieces cut from the same board-
No worries, they just go together, and that
Is that.
They fit like
“Of course.”
Like breathing.
Neatly.
Simply.
Carelessly.

I can’t imagine what it’s like
I can’t comprehend it-
To fit
Somewhere
Much less to fit somewhere
With someone.
I am always trying to corset myself into this world,
Lungs burning,
Trying to remain small enough to squeeze by
Catching myself by the wrist to keep from reaching
For anything.
And if there seems to be a spot where I might be able to exist as I am

It is always

Occupied.

Like a shiny pinprick
That thought hurts-
Not like the others it is newly cut
And still ******.
The idea that maybe there is a home for me
And that maybe I was too late for it.

They’re laughing.
He says something clever,
Passes a hand along the small of her back
And she leans into it,
Smiling because she loves that he wants to touch her innocently.
They seem to exist behind glass.
Not for the first time I wonder
If I could just slip into that life
Like a drop into an ocean
I want it badly
I want it stupidly
And I examine all the parts of myself,
All the edges and cracks,
All the things I’ve worked so hard to protect and repair.
It is not a welcome sight-
I am not a home
I am like an old ruin
Full of murmurings and cold spots
Full of dusty sunlight.
I sigh,
Knowing the secret I keep so poorly-
That if I really had a choice to be otherwise
I would have already made it.

I couldn’t reach them if I ran for a thousand years,
They are too far away.
They walk off the train, arms linked
Talking about nothing
And I watch them go
Like a hallucination,
Like a mirage in the desert.

Her perfume smells like forgetfulness
And it lingers.

This is a poem about how it feels as a gay woman to see a straight couple on the subway.

#gay #lesbian

Mikaila Sep 2018

Belonging

I saw the earth in your eyes
Every forest
And every ocean
And I faltered, surprised-
As unstoppable and unfathomable
As the deepest water
Constantly changing but always
More powerful, more beautiful, more vast than it seems.
As sacred and peaceful
As the quietest mountainside
Only birdsong and the murmuring of leaves to break the stillness
Sunlight dappling the ground with soft gold
And not a footfall for miles.
As desolate and strange as any desert
Sometimes hot enough to burn
Sometimes cold enough to bite
Harsh and lovely and full of secret life,
The anchor of a sky so large it bows out like a sail
The captor and nurturer of a thousand constellations.
As gentle and close
As the air that turns grasses into waves of color
And whispers to passers-by of springtime as the snow starts to melt
And coaxes dandelions to give up all their wishes
To the sky.
I saw all this and more
And I understood why you feel so out of place.
You belong to this world
And it belongs
To you.
We don’t love this place as we should.
We don’t stand in wonder enough.
We pave over it, we shut it out, we manufacture it
And you
Are the real thing
You belong here like so few people do.
That
I think
Is why you feel so lost.