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564 · May 2014
Away
Mikaila May 2014
This last thing.
I have one thing left to hope and work for.
If I do, in fact, lose this last thing...
I will take it as a sign that I need to go.
And I will go far.
Probably across the sea.
I have been saving up every single time I ever wanted to walk away from something, all my life.
Every little time that I wanted to break and just run from whoever was hurting me,
Every time I just wanted to cut my losses and quit something,
I restrained myself, because I knew
I could never run far enough to truly leave it behind, shackled as I was by youth.
I saved them all.
And if I do lose this, I will let it all out, and walk away for the first time.
And when I walk away for the first time, you can bet I will do it spectacularly and completely.
I am not afraid.
564 · Nov 2016
Untitled
Mikaila Nov 2016
I wasn't raised with a religion
And so I was never taught to blindly follow something.
The only thing in this world I blindly follow is my heart
And that gets me into enough trouble.
I couldn't imagine blindly following an idea
Or a leader
Or a religion
Or a country
Or even my own parents.
And so, it's true, I've never had much patriotism.
Because as I learned about our nation
It was always clear to me that we were never great, just powerful.
The ideas we tried to build on here are good ideas, freedom, the pursuit of happiness, all of it, I believe in that.
But we didn't build purely on those.
And too many people blindly follow too many others,
And too much complete certainty is hung on ideas that don't start within.
The only thing, I believe, that is safe to trust that way
Is yourself
And even then you must be cautious.
I'm not a patriot.
I'm not a zealot.
I'm not a follower, it's just never worked for me.
562 · Dec 2012
Under Your Skin
Mikaila Dec 2012
There is a special kind of alone that comes at night when things are quiet.
Beneath the drone of the tv,
Behind the beat of your music,
Beyond the pool of light in your kitchen
And just outside the glass of your windowpane.
It is the most insidious feeling I have ever experienced.
It is a silence that requires no cessation of noise.
It is a darkness that needs no lack of light.
It is an isolation that needs no absence of connection.
It is simply the time,
The force, almost tangible,
Of the night when you are utterly solitary no matter how hard you try to fight it off.
It is the feeling from which the loneliness so often felt by people who live alone springs.
For the only protection from such a feeling is the embrace of another person.
It is a primal thing, this hackle raising time of the night,
When all the clamor of human existence seems to stop,
To get far away as if behind thick glass.
It is born in us to fear it. I'm not sure why.
But it needs no help to be what it is.

So turn on your television. Crank up your favorite song. Blaze the lights. Shut the curtains.
But when you curl up on your couch with your legs tucked beneath you and try to relax, you will still feel hunted.
Which, to me, begs the question:
What used to hunt us?
What put in us the fear of that feeling?
What used to cut us off and find us alone in the dark?
Because instincts aren't in you for no reason.
We are the product of thousands of years of evolutionary success.
Someone tell me why that feeling persisted, if it's useless?
562 · Mar 2015
using you up
Mikaila Mar 2015
I feel so...

Silenced.
There are so many more words on this page
Than it seems.
561 · May 2015
I Hate Silence
Mikaila May 2015
Make no mistake
I have seen cities rise and fall
I have watched my temples burn
I have stood, solid,
As the earth cracked and withered at my feet-
I am NOT weak.
I have buried my grieving fingers in the dirt
And tried to resurrect a love
Gone to dust, gone to seed.
I have wailed at the moon like the loneliest wolf,
Bereft of the comfort only touch provides,
And I have torn through thorns and briars,
Desperate to follow its cold white light to the horizon
But I have never
Knelt
And I will not.
I worship from my feet,
My gods are larger than to care if I fall to a crawl in pursuit of them-
My worship bids me run
Jump
Writhe
Sing
But never surrender
For I must fight to love this sky
These hands
This earth whose pain and promise I have received
With hunger.
I must fight to stand
And it would be a disservice to anything I were to love
To let it knock me to my knees.
560 · Aug 2013
Home
Mikaila Aug 2013
I want to go home.
Not the artificial one in my head,
Or the temporary, fleeting one
In the comfort of your arms.
I want home
What home is supposed to be.
I want somewhere, or someone, or something
That I can go to
And feel okay
No matter how not-okay I am.
I want something, someone, somewhere
That is always there, always available, always certain.
Not a treatment, a quick fix, a medication
For a fragmented heart
And a shuddering soul.
A home.
I want a home.
Is home too much to ask for?
558 · Jul 2015
October 22nd, 2014
Mikaila Jul 2015
I am shocked that I am here.
Look at this flesh, so thin
So pale
So brittle
Like an eggshell- cracked.
It seems so easy to crush
And yet
You'd never guess the blows it has taken
Without crumbling.
I wonder if I'd be respected if my injuries showed on the outside.
I wonder if I'd be feared.
There is a point when pity turns to fear, you know- when the thought is spawned that something SHOULD be dead, and isn't.
A mistrust forms,
An uneasiness.
I feel it sometimes when I look too long into my own eyes in the mirror
And see flashes in their depths: all the silvery memories of pain
Like little fish, like little blades.
I feel disquieted at the notion
That I can hold a sea of suffering
And sigh out only sweetness.
It's not that suffering has sewn no cruelty inside me-
Quite the opposite, it has been a spark caught on the breeze, and something hot and dark
Rages in here nearly all the time.
But only in here.
I have seen too many hurt souls
Hurt others
And I refuse to do the same.
And although it is extraordinary that I am not ground to dust by the blows landed from outside
What I am truly surprised about is that I have not been shattered
From in here.
I am crueler than most people you've met
But only to myself.
Only inside.
I am like a paper lantern-
All flames inside and soft glow out.
And I refuse to hurt you. I refuse to. That is my revenge upon everyone
Who has ever been cruel to me:
It ends here.
Now.
With me.
I will not let it out, not even if it damns me.
I am shocked that I am here.
558 · Oct 2013
Take Take Take
Mikaila Oct 2013
I can't do this again.
The staying up til 3
The "I'm sick."
And I always asked what was wrong
Even though I knew it was the self same soul sickness
That always went round the mulberry bush to gibberish and venomous hate,
The you-can't-fix-me-but-you're-why-I-broke lies
The jigsaw puzzle mind crumbling in shards
Of nonsense suffering.
I can't do this again.
I can't be your medication.
I was a shade, a shadow of myself
Because all my vitality was sapped
By your demands.
I loved you until I was a husk of a person,
And if I'm not enough,
Darling,
It's not me anymore, it's you.
It's not that you don't deserve reprieve,
It's that you take take take
And it doesn't even heal you.
It does nothing.
All getting does
Is make you want.
It makes you think that
If only
You get
Just
A little more
You'll feel it.
I'm six months of constant proof
That you won't.
Do you understand?
I can't do this again.
557 · Dec 2012
Rose Tinted Glasses
Mikaila Dec 2012
I want to be your best friend.
I want to be your love.
I want to be someone you can trust.
Someone you miss.
Someone who can help you if you need help.
Someone who you let give to you.
I want to be your comfort, that someone out there will always love you whether you even think of them anymore.
That if in 20 years you are crying and call me up, I will be there to help you, no strings, no questions asked, no matter what you've done to me.
I want to be the one who would die for you.
And the one who will live for you.
Whether or not you even notice.
In the end, it really doesn't matter.
What matters is THAT I love you, and that everything in my life that I love will have something of you about it, to me.
And when I am far away,
In London looking at the old streets,
In India when I'm looking across the slums to the sparkling city beyond,
In Ireland when I stare at the sea from a moldering castle-
Wherever I am, whenever it is, I will think of you, and it will mean more to me because I knew you.
That's what I do, it's who I am.
I love the world through a conduit.
Through a person who has touched my soul.
And they get all mixed up, eventually, the two of them, until all the love I ever have, and had, and could have is for everything, all through one person who has changed me.
Every artist dedicates their work to something,
Every artist has their reason for the art they make.
And when you live your life as if it is art, you have to live it the way you do BECAUSE of something.
I will give you all I can, and ask nothing,
Because you exist and I can love the world by thinking of you.
The whole rose tinted glasses thing?
I know it means you see no flaws in the person you love, but it means something else, as well, to me.
Those who love the way I do see the whole world through how much they love,
And let me tell you,
THAT is why it is worth it.
Because the whole world is beautiful when you love someone like this.
556 · Oct 2013
Grandness
Mikaila Oct 2013
Don't give me Never's and a mouth full of Forever's,
I know your kind.
You are human and
Us humans speak in grandness by starlight
But wake in the gutters of our lives
Unsure of how we got there.
We give because we think, "Oh why not?"
And when the Why Not becomes apparent
We change, like the tide.
Don't talk to me about how you
Will Never wish me gone,
Will Always want to hear me speak.
There is no guarantee, not even for you.
Don't make those promises to me,
And do not make them to yourself-
You are only what the world has made,
And the world makes nothing permanent.
Don't speak to me in Never's and Forever's.
Don't patronize me.
Don't give me a blanket statement, that has (seemingly) no expiration date
Just so that each time you meet my eyes you do not have to face how your heart is inside that second.
Don't speak to me in Grandness, in Permanence.
Only tell me that Now, on This Day,
You are not tired of me
Yet.
555 · Mar 2014
Thank You For Smiling
Mikaila Mar 2014
Thousands of miles
And four hours away
Somebody stopped and watched you playing your music
And said,
"Thank you for smiling."
And I finally discovered
What I should have said to you
The moment I first met you.

All the hurting I do
Wondering and worrying
If I'll ever feel the warmth of your sunlight again,
It's all about that,
It's all
Because I am just afraid
You'll never smile at me again.
It doesn't make sense,
It's not explainable.
It's a happiness I have never felt before
And do not expect
To feel very often in my turbulent life.
It is a joy that stops the mind,
Save for one thought:
Don't
Go.

It's what that man saw
Walking by.

Maybe that man is sad.
Maybe his life has him down,
And he hates his job,
Or he is fighting with his wife,
Or his dog just died.
Or maybe it's even worse.
Maybe that man
Has just had the worst years of his life
Drag him helpless behind them
To hit the ground hollow over and over
Like a tin can dangling from a dingy car bumper on the highway.
Maybe he has only just
Stood up again.
You don't know.
How brilliant, you don't know!
Because he could be any of those things,
But you
Made him smile.
You
Gave him hope.
You
Had such an effect on him
With just your smile
That he stopped,
And thanked you.

I wish I had done that when I first saw your face.

Maybe today
You only made that man's good day
A little better.
Or maybe today
Your smile
Saved his **** life.
You have no idea.
That's the point.
I know what that man saw.
I envy him painfully.
I know how it feels
To be smiled at
By you.
All the poems I've written you,
All the nights I've spent sleepless
Afraid to lose the little tiny moment of you I got,
All the time I've set aside for you,
That's why.
I want to thank you
For smiling at me.
If everything from here on in my life
Crumbles like wet chalk
And I lose any chance I might have
To thank you otherwise,
I consider it worth it.
I consider your smile
Worth all of it.
554 · Jan 2013
Lacie Trent (Epitaph 2)
Mikaila Jan 2013
I loved you all very much, you know.
It’s not that I didn’t.
I loved everything, but I think that was my problem.
I’m not sorry that I am here, for it is a release from love.
“To love is to destroy, and to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”
I read that somewhere.
After that- and even before- I felt the burden of the damage I did to everyone I met,
And to myself.
One day, I felt it too much, and all my love soured to hatred.
Then I took the knife and turned my love inward,
And here I am in the dark,
Free and empty.
It is not so bad as you might suppose.
553 · Dec 2012
It Didn't Hurt A Bit
Mikaila Dec 2012
The ends justify the means, then, darling?
**** the bird and insist it never could sing?
Force the truth to hide and it simply goes away?
Demand fresh blood in sacrifice every day to pay?
Piling posies in the pockets of the putrid dead
Covers up the rot and lets you turn your pretty head.
But underneath the folly is the same
That forced the crying loss to change its name.
You always speak of what you don't deserve
But yet expect each whim to end up served,
If you close your eyes and witness shallowly
You are content that there's no more to see.
But underneath you must have felt the shame
The barbed and anguished playing of your game:
Just because you forced someone to lie
Doesn't mean you've won and changed the sky.
It is the same as it has always been.
Even if you conquer, you don't win.
553 · Jun 2014
Contact
Mikaila Jun 2014
Sometimes I think life is about learning to get as close to what sustains you as you possibly can, without ever touching it. That seems like an appropriately beautiful, tragic way for the universe to work. The moment before a kiss is always excruciating and incredible. The memory of a lover is always unbearably sweet and terrifyingly hazy. The silence right after a song ends is always heartbreakingly sacred. What if life is about not touching the things you love?
I'm not sure I could stand it if I knew I was right.
551 · Dec 2013
Darling
Mikaila Dec 2013
I don't love you for the person I want you to be.
I don't love you for the person you want you to be either.
I don't love you for being anything,
Or doing anything,
Or saying anything,
Or trying for anything.
I love you because I just
Do,
Okay?
I looked at you and I loved you
And that
Means that whatever you turn into or don't
Or succeed at or fail at
Or however dead your fish are or however much
You might think I'm trying to change you,
No,
I love you because I just do.
I will continue to love you because
I.
Just.
Do.

Whatever you want, I'll want to give it to you.
And if you want nothing, that's okay too.
If you're happy, I will be happy to see you happy.
If you're sad, I will feel lucky to offer support
(And I will not demand that my support make any difference.)
If you are empty,
I will still feel whole when you touch me,
And if you let me I will put my arms around you and tell you
It's alright not to care about anything.
(And I won't ask you to care about that.)
And if you ever wish I didn't love you
So that you could just stop trying,
I'm sorry,
Because I just do.
I'm telling you I could understand
I could just be there
Because I've been there
Because I'll be back there, I know it.
I could just be there and ask nothing of you
And I'm telling you I want to.
I don't know why. I don't care why.
I just
Do.
It's not something I planned,
And it's not something I maintain,
And it's not something I demand anything for.
It just is.
I just do-
Love you.

...*Darling.
550 · Jun 2016
I Wither
Mikaila Jun 2016
Sometimes, when you are away
I can feel myself shrinking inside.
I don't want it to happen.
I don't like it, or what it means about me.
But it continues anyway.
It's this.... feeling.
Like a flower languishing in a dark closet.
And I hate it.
I don't want to write about it.
I don't want to think about it.
I just want to go to sleep
And only wake up when you're back.
And how useful is that?
But today I slept
18 hours
And I wish I was
Asleep again
And this is why I am hard to love.
I know you being away is not the only reason I feel like this.
I know I feel like this
Because my brain is full of chemicals
Making connections
Which my mind tries to explain.
But on days like this
Days like this that stretch into weeks like this
(Please, not months?)
I reach for you and I wither inside when you are far away
Busy
Distracted
Out
Gone.
Sometimes when you're back
It feels like you're still not
Back.
And so I don't push anymore, on days like this.
But I'm the same person who cried over Skype to you
At Christmastime
Because I needed you to reassure me that you loved me.
It has been so long
And you will get tired of it
And I will still need it.
I still need it.
I still need you.
On days like this I don't tell you anymore
Because you're always so busy
And because I can never tell,
So far away,
If you are going through the motions of loving me.
I let you stay away without telling you it hurts because it would hurt more if you pretended to be here
And maybe that's how it would be, you know?
Maybe you'd be calling it in, talking to me because I begged you to.
And there's never a good time to fall apart on you.
There's never a good time to say that for months I've been feeling sadder and sadder, feeling you slip away because
You feel secure
But you have to know, someday I have to tell you
I don't know what safe means.
And I'm always afraid. It will take
So many years
For me not to be afraid.
And it's not your fault
And it's so much to ask,
But I need you to be here.
And I just...
I wither
When you're not.
550 · Dec 2013
I Speak Truth
Mikaila Dec 2013
I need to unlearn the language of fear
That I have been speaking since birth.
My parents spoke in fear
And I volleyed back insecurities and reassurances in equal measure.
And when I turned away to meet the world
I spoke to it in my native tongue
And oh,
It spoke back.
But I need to unlearn this language.
I need to let go of my understanding
Because I don't really understand.
I'm only afraid I do.
I'm more afraid that I know what will happen
Than I am that I don't.
So what good are these strangled words
Gasped out like a dying man's last breath?
When I know that this breath is not my last
When I know that this veil of mistrust has darkened my view of the whole world
And made it untrue.
If I seek truth
If I seek truth out of the fear that I will be attacked by it if I don't find it first
I have failed,
I am failing,
Because I am not finding what is true,
I am finding what I'm scared will be.
Teach me to walk again.
Teach me new words.
Teach me to sing.
Teach me to breathe.
I don't want this doubt anymore.
Doubt doesn't make you the wiser one,
The prepared, ready-for-anything, jaded winner.
It makes you hurt.
It makes you hurt before you hurt.
I am done with doubt.
And I will fight
To force it to be done with me, as well.
549 · Oct 2013
Distance
Mikaila Oct 2013
Distance isn't really distance.
One inch can be an inch,
Or it can be miles.
I can sit across the room from you and feel your fingers on my cheek,
I can lay states away and feel your hands in mine,
Or I can be right there, so close our atoms dance and mingle,
And be on the other side of the world.
Distance is a funny thing.
I am sending you off to a distant shore
With a foot of space
And a lot of wistful thoughts.
I am afraid
You will read over my shoulder.
I am sorry
I am so jumbled inside.
I wish I didn't hate walls
I wish I was a bit calmer.
The problem with me, really,
Is that once I taste connection
I cannot stand to be alone.
If you break my solitude, beware,
I will be hideously lonely whenever you are near
If you are not near.
Distance, see.
It's a funny thing.
Doesn't have rules like we have rules for it.
And I believe
That there is nothing quite so devastating
As suddenly being
On the other side of the world.
549 · Feb 2014
Take My Time
Mikaila Feb 2014
Time waiting is time wasted
But if you can't make up your mind
Take my time, take my time.
To someone who knows precisely what she wants
Every second of every day
Time spent waiting is time thrown away
But take my time
Because what else
Could really be done with it?
548 · Oct 2018
A Sweet Little Poem
Mikaila Oct 2018
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.
548 · Nov 2016
A Moment of Tenderness
Mikaila Nov 2016
Somehow
Even now
After everything you've done to me,
I love to see your face.
I think you're beautiful.
I think you're mesmerizing.
Your soul pulls mine
And it always will.
That, I think,
Must be what it means to truly love someone.
Mikaila Oct 2013
I wonder what I did to lose you.
I wonder what I did to ever have you in the first place.
How long will it be
Before not everyone who gets anywhere near close to me
Knows your name?
I hope it's always that way.
Time comes and goes,
People,
Loves, even.
But you are like the ink in my hips,
You are there at the beginning and end of every day,
There for every first kiss
And every sob.
You are there in my head, in my heart,
In my skin,
And I don't think I could live without you.
Sometimes I forget how much of my life is you, because you are there like the sky.
Never in my life will I wander outside
And look up
And see no sky.
You're...
You're like that.
But when the night grows and swallows up the world, I think of you, I miss you,
I would confess to you
All my little feelings,
The ones that gnaw at me through the day,
The ones I trust no one else with.
Sometimes I lay in bed and think of that night in New York,
The night I broke down and told you that nothing mattered to me except you,
And that I was scared I'd **** for you and die for you
And not care about any of it if only I could just...
Look at you and touch your skin,
And instead of recoiling from me like I thought you would,
You wrapped your arms and legs around me,
You held me in every way a person can be held,
And that was the first time I have ever cried in somebody's arms,
And that is the first time I have ever gotten exactly what I needed from somebody I loved.
And when I think of that night
I love you so much it tears me up inside.
I don't think people were meant for feelings like the ones you give me.
I don't think they're supposed to exist at all.
I feel madness on the edges of how much you sway my heart,
As if I could just, one day, lose all my sanity to that feeling
And become useless and broken, out of joy, because joy can destroy just like pain can.
Darling, I'd give it up for a night with you.
If you promised that when you walked away from me I would die I would throw it all away
Without a second thought.
I know you know that. I know you've seen it proven. I know you love me anyway.
God, how do you thank someone for being your soul?
How do you even hold a concept like that in your mind?
How is it that it's been almost two years since I fell in love with you,
Treasured and lost you,
How is it that it's exactly as intense to this day, even far away and far removed?
I hope you stay in my skin with the ink,
That secret that tells the world I am yours,
And a little piece of you
Is mine.
546 · Apr 2013
If She Stays
Mikaila Apr 2013
What if?
The scratch of my pen fills the room up with sound.
Silent- they've all left.
And as his blue sweatshirt receded last behind the glass
I heaved a sigh of blissful solitude and desperate relief.
Today is not a day for company.
What if?
I love how every sound in an empty room is loud.
I love how rough and grating my words are
Lent sound they don't possess.
Not meaning but sound, like a rainstorm.
What if?
This morning I woke with a start to muffled birdsong and pale light.
I don't know if I love or hate the morning sun-
It is so unforgiving.
I woke and when I stood up, dazed,
My room was unfamiliar as a crime scene
Full of red and blue splashes and
Bright yellow tape, vivid
But muted like a silent film.
"What if?" I thought,
And I stared at my clothes
Because I'd forgotten what to do with them.
A good long moment passed, holding the cloth,
Thinking that perhaps I was supposed to set it down?
Tie it in knots?
And then instinct kicked in brutal
And I figured it out.
What if?
Now I'm here and Blue Sweatshirt is back.
He is loud and I want to hush him-
It is not a day for speech.
I want to stop the world
Or make it slow like the air is gel,
Dreamy and undemanding.
Distilled, like me, to the skeleton of functionality.
What if?
What if I never see you again?
546 · Sep 2018
Belonging
Mikaila Sep 2018
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.
Mikaila Dec 2013
And suddenly
The joke is on you
When I remember,
Because I do remember.
When I met her she was miles away
Across oceans and mountains and valleys,
Tethered and turned away.
When I met her there was not a chance.
And yet I've been so close,
So close I could have wept with joy.
So close I felt her heartbeat like a drum against my chest.
She has held me in her arms and told me
It will be okay.
And whatever happens,
I can't miss her as much as I missed her
When I met her.
543 · Sep 2014
A Very Strange Love Poem
Mikaila Sep 2014
You are going to drive me the rest of the way to insane, aren't you?
Alright. I've already hit a tree once this year. Bring it on.
I'd go anywhere with you.
541 · Sep 2014
I Named The Moon
Mikaila Sep 2014
I named the moon after you
And every time its gentle light touches me
I catch some of it
And burn for you like an ember.
541 · Jul 2014
God's Feet
Mikaila Jul 2014
I wish your hands had left a mark.
I wish your lips had.
I wish I could walk through life
Patterned with the evidence that you
Touched me.
I wish everyone could see-
I wish I could-
The exact parts of my skin that you changed,
That you own,
That you blessed.
540 · Dec 2015
Home Sweet Home
Mikaila Dec 2015
I have a home in my own heart when I think of you.
For the first time,
I have a home I hold inside me.
Because of loving you, I am a little bit home
Wherever I go.
539 · Sep 2016
Untitled
Mikaila Sep 2016
There is a sacredness to people who are damaged.
Sometimes I think
That
Is my religion.
539 · Jun 2014
Consumed
Mikaila Jun 2014
Missing you always did feel like starving to death.
But I'm as addicted to the emptiness of your absence
As I am to the comfort of your love.
So close.
I was so close.
We
Were so close.
And now I want nothing more
Than to die of the lack of you,
However many years it may take.
Mikaila Jun 2016
I've been searching for a fountain for this entire visit.
People don't seem to wish much here.
I had a two pence piece saved in my pocket
And I took it everywhere with me
Just in case.
And maybe as I walked it absorbed my uncertainty
My misery
My acceptance
My love and joy
Maybe it grew warm in my pocket with the weight of everything coursing through me for these weeks.
And here I am, sat alone and silent by a bubbling fountain
In a soaring white hall
And the light glances off coins in its depths
They glimmer and wink, giving the water a false glow.
So many wishes.
At the bottom, where the water drains, I can see them piled, half hidden by stone.
People who sat like I sit and poured their desires into a coin
Or people who walked casually past and, on a whim, found a penny and tossed it in,
Their wishes have collected here, like sand and pebbles at the emptying of a river,
The residue of us.
I take my coin out and hold it in my palm until it grows hot.
I have always known what to wish for before.
Every moment, always known where I wanted to go.
But this time I turn it over and over in my fingers, trying to read something divine in its ridges and valleys, its rough edges.
I think for a long time.
Finally, I decide
Not to decide.
"Help me."
"Save me."
"I want to be happy."
Because for the first time in my life
I don't know what will get me there.
I don't know what I want to happen.
I only know what I want to feel.
I want to be happy.
I want to be happy.
I want to be happy.
Help me be happy.
I repeat it in my mind, trying to find a clearer answer, a better wish,
But all that comes, cyclical, is "I want to be happy."
I throw the coin in and it sinks to the bottom, indistinguishable from the others.
I've made my wish.
So why do I feel so lost?
534 · Mar 2014
It's Always About You
Mikaila Mar 2014
Give me your hatred. I will make art of it.
I want to be happy, but I do not need it:
Any fuel will do.
534 · May 2013
_
Mikaila May 2013
_
I miss myself,
And it feels queer, because
I never really liked her
Anyway.
533 · Oct 2013
Dragon's Love Poem
Mikaila Oct 2013
Someday your prince will fall.
I've got all the time in the world.
I've been sleeping for a thousand years,
And I can rest a thousand more,
Wrapped in dreams like thorns to protect me from his looming shadow.
All the words you say that he refuses to hear,
All the secrets you confess that he takes for granted,
All the times you know he is not true love but take him anyway,
They rise like the tide.
And maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe you'll spend your life where you're "supposed to be",
Because it's eaaaasy,
Because, after all, having a prince wins you so very much
In this backward world.
But I'll be here, quiet as the stones,
Here in the dead of night and here in the harshness of day,
To love you exactly as you are,
In the dungeons of your soul where the cruelty lives,
And to the top of the highest soaring tower, gleaming in the sunrise.
Nobody will love you like I do. Nobody will sacrifice for you, like I do.
For,
You know it not, but-
It was I who kissed you awake,
And let somebody else wear the armor
So that I could, for a fleeting moment,
Feel you skin to skin.
529 · Oct 2018
Untitled
Mikaila Oct 2018
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.
529 · Nov 2013
The Fall
Mikaila Nov 2013
You know that feeling
When you're standing on the edge of somewhere
Very high
And for a moment
For whatever reason
The muscles in your legs and feet
Roll just a little forward
And you sway towards that fall
And before the vertigo sets in,
Before the fear blooms like weeds in the core of your
Stomach,
There is a moment of utter awe?
That is how it feels to look at her.
I say awe,
It may not be the right word,
I considered "peace" or "joy"
But
See
Awe is both, perhaps,
But also neither.
Awe has the high stakes,
Awe is part fear part love,
And while peace settles in you like a comfy chair,
Awe soars like a rollercoaster hill,
And that's the real feeling,
As closely as I know how to say it.
528 · Oct 2013
No Day But Today
Mikaila Oct 2013
You're beautiful.
I wish I didn't know your expiration date was coming
Sooner
Rather than later.
Last night in the stage lights you were breathtaking.
I saw from you a rawness I have always admired in your eyes,
But never fully glimpsed.
You hurt my heart with loveliness, my exquisite friend.
All I want for you are sunny days
And a long,
Long life.
Seeing you fall apart up there, knowing what I do,
It was agony.
"Goodbye love, hello disease"
And I crumbled.
I actually took my glasses off and openly wept for a moment,
And the man next to me looked at me strangely.
Who would guess that you are more invested in that role than you appear?
I know you love that,
The little references you can sprinkle through your life.
I know you're addicted to telling the truth through your subtleties-
If people only knew how many times you tell them!
I have one thing to ask of you,
Black haired beauty with piercing eyes of blue
And a heart of polished gold.
You are so amazing, so sweet and beautiful and complex and courageous, and so very
Alive.
I'm begging you: Don't die.
*Just

Don't

Die.
Mikaila Nov 2014
"It's okay."
Yes, darling, I believe it is. When I look at you, I believe it is.
Title is a line from one of Pablo Neruda's sonnets.
523 · Oct 2015
Untitled
Mikaila Oct 2015
I am next to you
In the velvety darkness.
I can hear the city breathing
From just outside your window,
Breathing like you.
Your soft, rhythmic sighing blends with the sounds of life drifting in from the street
And it's like you're the same,
Uncontainable, indescribable.
The light kisses the soft lines of you
And your lovely, wild hair cascades down the pillows.
I feel...
This is what I want my nights to be like.
I want to know you're safe, sleeping beside me, I want to feel you here-
The smoothness of your skin pressed up against mine intermittently
The way I can feel your heartbeat through your chest.
You're so present, so real and warm and... Mine,
And I want to kiss you dizzy
I want to map every inch of you with my hands,
Always longing to be closer.
But I just lie back into the pillows, feel you breathe.
I wonder, are you dreaming?
Behind those green eyes
What worlds are there, playing out the musings of such a soul?
Ah, the familiar feeling-
I long to know you
Every part of you
Every shame and insecurity you are worried I'll find
I want to find them and love them all
With the same tenderness that I love your voice and your lips and your passionate mind.
I want to be close to you in ways I don't even know what to think of.
You turn, mumbling, and reach for me
And something in my chest
Rises and falls all at the same time.
I never know
In this life
How long I will get to be happy
But this is forever
This right now
This
Is something that I won't come back the same from
No matter what happens.
So safe, so tender...
I could be anything with you.
I could grow into anything, nourished by your gentle glow.
I long for you
And I long for the person I will become the longer I spend in your arms.
Change me.
Make me.
Heal
Me.
For all my fears that you will tire of my gifts
And of my constancy
For all the scars I bare and all the times my world has ended
When I look into your eyes I cannot fear you-
I am too alive.
522 · Nov 2013
Shock Treatment
Mikaila Nov 2013
Love makes you an addict.
Loss, a *******.
I have learned my legs again,
The shocking tenderness of my fingerprints,
Rediscovered the planes of my own face
By touch
And found them sharp enough to cut.
I have risen from the belly of the earth
To hands and knees, to my unsteady feet,
And I have stood and asked the world again
To do its worst,
And give me its best.
I have read the changing seasons of my life
Like braille,
Felt my way
Until the day I gained the courage to open my eyes,
And found that the tears had all but dried and gone,
And that the light was chilling, to the bone.
521 · Jan 2013
Glass Suspension
Mikaila Jan 2013
I think I might have better been a fish
Skittering up and down among the waving weeds,
Free of thought and love and dream and wish,
Cuddled by a current like a breeze.

And I would linger on or then be eaten
Because those are the options to be had.
But never by another bled or beaten-
My wanting blood now cool and never sad.

And never would I drown in pride or sin
Because I'd take my breath beneath the water
But if I were to drown and nature win,
My departure from the world would hardly matter.

How lovely life would be in blue green quiet,
To know just what I should be and to be it.
Never again to feel love or deny it,
And forget what I have seen soon as I see it.
521 · Oct 2013
Exquis
Mikaila Oct 2013
I really don't think you know
That sometimes while I'm sitting here with a hot cup of tea warming my hands, reading plays,
And you are beside me, writing poetry
With your sunset skin and midnight hair,
That sometimes I stop to watch your back as you work.
Your fingers fly over the keys
And your shoulders tense
And symphonies of velvet shadows play along them,
Cascade to the center of you and spill down beneath black lace.
(Oh, the maddening urge to touch
And see if you are an exquisite blend of strain and surrender.)
Sometimes I glance over there, and see you, sleek as a panther.
You know the delicious way their shoulders rise and fall,
Fluid, languid, full of glorious tension and barely contained power,
That is what I see in you,
Crouched on a crocheted blanket in a dorm room typing poetry.
How ordinary,
How extraordinary:
Sometimes I think you will spread wings
At any moment.
I think they'd be black and smooth,
Made of smoke and shadows and those little sparks that fall from cigarettes when you tap the ashes away like falling stars.
Sometimes I wonder how you'd sigh if I traced the hills and valleys of your shoulders with my fingertips,
With my mouth.
Sometimes I can almost hear it, almost feel it, and
I look back to my safe little lines of words
To steady my trembling mind.
All this comes over me
In the barest of moments when I happen to look up from my script briefly
And see you curled beside me, sensual and oblivious,
Typing that gravitational poetry
That I can never completely fathom.
520 · Mar 2014
le feu de l'espoir
Mikaila Mar 2014
Are you sad?
Afraid?
Alone?
Your suffering casts phantoms on the wall
And they dance with all the others.
I am telling you
That there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
We are each other's light,
And each of us is full of shadows.
We make do. We are only
Candles.
We flicker.
Sometimes we create more confusion
Than illumination.
But we need one another,
Because we hold a flame up
To the dark parts of the people we venture near.
We set fire to things that
Wait long in silence,
Yearning to combust,
And bring light to things
That have been hidden for long enough
To be thickly caked with dust.
520 · Mar 2014
Fool's Gold
Mikaila Mar 2014
I forgave you years ago.
And yet you accuse me still,
Mistaking the fallout
For blame.
Only your talents
Could turn me into the villain.
You don't really want me to forgive
You want me to forget.

From you I have learned that humans
Are not a forgiving lot.
They know very little about the concept.
Show forgiveness to them
And they thank you with mistrust,
Greedily demanding it be proven.
They think they deserve much more than they get
And fear that they deserve
Much less.
They hoard it madly, like gold,
Biting it to test its true worth.

And yet if the tables are turned
And you seek it yourself
You must pull tiny pieces of it from them
Like teeth.
520 · Apr 2016
-
Mikaila Apr 2016
-
I'm sorry you saw me lingering there.
I just wanted
To see you smile.
517 · Jan 2015
Galaxies: III
Mikaila Jan 2015
I want to miss you fully, properly.
I want to look at photos of you and smile.
I want to be able to trace the planes of your face with my fingertips
And love you quietly
Full of joy instead of full of pain.
I am not there yet.
I ache too much for you.
It feels like every molecule of me is being pulled and blurred and bent towards you, wherever you are,
And I try not to think about it.
I try not to think about it because photos of you
Do not make me smile.
Not at first.
They stop my heart.
They stop my breath, and for a moment I don't exist because the longing has become so vast that it unmakes me.
I just can't win with that, it seems-
When you kiss me, I am unmade and remade.
When you leave me, I am unmade and remade.
And you wonder why I told you
That you hold the earth in your hands.
You might as well
For it seems that all the gravity I ever feel comes from you.
I love every line of your face
Looking at it
Seeing your eyes sparkle with that soul behind them
But its loveliness absolutely breaks my heart.
It hurts. It hurts to miss you, now.
You've been gone too long,
And if you aren't coming back I want to skip this part-
The painful, wrenching part-
And move on to when I can look at your picture
Trace your features with my fingers
And smile without wanting to cry, as well.
517 · Jan 2015
Heaviness
Mikaila Jan 2015
Silence often stills me.
I don't like it.
Sometimes I will accidentally find myself sitting in silence
And a cascade of sadness will begin to drift over me
And inside I will see it coming
And in my mind I will flee from it.
But...
It's like sleep paralysis, almost.
If you've ever woken up unable to move when you want to, you know the feeling I mean.
Get up! I think.
Turn on the television.
Take your pills.
Eat something.
Get a voice besides your own into your head
Now
Or it will be dire.
And I sit there
Still.
Paralyzed.
Feeling black ice glaze over where my panic should be
And depression creeping towards me like a dense fog.
And just as I am about to be swallowed by it
My mind returns to my body
And I jump up, escaping.
It is
Disconcerting to say the least.
Mikaila Oct 2013
Tell me again how hard it is
To be with someone
Who is not ashamed
To hold your hand
In front of his parents.

Did no one ever teach you shame?
They *did
.
You must remember secrecy-
It's not as if you never knew it.
You lost to it.
Tell me how you write that off
As just
The way it is.
Tell me why you fight for the other things
And not for this.
I think
It's because you no longer have to.
Nobody avoids you if you shop for groceries with him,
Taking the adjacent aisle
So as not to interact.
None of your "friends" would rather
You two not cuddle on their couch at the party
Because not having to explain it to the other guests
Is just
Easier.
There is not a family dinner
You cannot bring him to
And sit beside him
Unabashedly.
Has it been so long that you've forgotten?
These are treasures
These normalcies.
These are trifles, if you have them
But if not
They erode, little sharpened grains of sand.
Don't mistake me-
It is no less valid
(Oh, according to the world, in fact, much more)
But
Don't you tell me
It's just as hard.
515 · Mar 2013
Blindfolds
Mikaila Mar 2013
I smell like you all over.
Your perfume clings to my hair,
My skin.
It has seeped into my pores
And softened my lips.
I don't even know what it's called
But I wear it like silk
And I'm not sure I want it to wash off.
I think it's true-
The senses sharpen when sight flees.
Should I feel different?
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